Amazing: The Rebuilding the MacArthur Maze (Documentary)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as proof that infrastructure can be rebuilt very fast when incentives and urgency line up.
What it is
A half-hour television special on the 2007 fiery collapse of a connector in the Bay Area's MacArthur Maze and its rebuilding in 26 days. It was produced for the Professional Engineers in California Government.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2021 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends viewtransform · 2023-03 · on “Why Construction Projects Always Go over Budget”
There's also the MacArthur Maze collapse in the Bay area 2007 [1] The overpass collapsed on April 29th. They had it reopened to traffic 26 days later. This was American leadership, project management and engineering at it's finest [2]. [1] [LINK] [2] [this video]
Cites jldugger · 2022-03 · on “Why America can’t build quickly anymore”
Plenty of examples of massive speedups in repairs: 1: [LINK] 2: [this video] It's not that we can't "build quickly," but that we can't build anything _new_ quickly.
Cites shagie · 2023-03 · on “Why Construction Projects Always Go over Budget”
For a counter example, the rebuilding of the MacArthur Maze in 26 days back in 2007. [LINK] > A contractor with a proven track record of rebuilding damaged freeways (most notably the Santa Monica Freeway after the 1994 Northridge earthquake) well ahead of schedule, C. C. Myers, Inc., submitted a winning bid of $876,075 to repair the damage to the I-580 connector. The bid was estimated to cover only one-third of the cost of the work, but the firm counted on making up the shortfall with an incentive of $200,000 per day if the work was completed before June 27, 2007. > On the evening of Thursday, May 24, the I-580 connector re-opened, just before the busy Memorial Day weekend. The deadline to f