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Comment by bborud

6 hours ago

Ask a Norwegian to dig a tunnel and they will turn into a gopher on meth. We are the undisputed champions of tunnels in terms of tunnel density. Show us a piece of rock and we'll put a big hole in it.

However.

Ask a Norwegian to fix a piece of road and you will be staring at a hole in the ground for 4 years while people will take turns leaning on a shovel in that hole while surrounded by at least 4 different categories of supervisor or inspector.

But to inject some realism: if they say 4 years they can probably do it in 5. And it'll take another year or so to fix fuck-ups that in retrospect will look stupid and thoughtless, but which are realistically unavoidable. We'll whine about it. A lot. And each week the whole country will be experts on something new. Like evil-sounding compounds for stopping water ingress or how to insulate wires. And then suddenly it starts working.

The US will take a 3 year project, bid it out as a 10 year project to "save money", and cancel it at year 20 for cost overruns and because it's not projected to be operational until year 30.

  • Stretching a 3 year project to a 10 year project costs way more money. Labor costs go up every year. My state DOT manages to complete their road projects on schedule, even the large ones.

    I can think of a handful of projects that turned out like your example, California HSR and some nuclear plants. The vast majority of projects are completed on time.

> Ask a Norwegian to dig a tunnel and they will turn into a gopher on meth. We are the undisputed champions of tunnels in terms of tunnel density. Show us a piece of rock and we'll put a big hole in it.

You're saying the the general sense from the old germanic language cultures that dwarves and their ilk were somehow Scandanavian is rooted is a well-dug reality?