So our civilization seems to lack the technological sophistication to build a ramp for less than $50k a pop and the fix is a baroque legal and organizational workaround.

> The Bureau of Street Services (StreetsLA) has not repaved a street since last June, and the city’s latest budget practically zeros out repaving for next fiscal year. StreetsLA crews are still doing some road repairs, fixing potholes and patching problem areas. But the most basic form of urban maintenance—full street resurfacing—has all but disappeared in America’s second-largest city.

Anecdotally, a residential street (four blocks long) was freshly paved two days ago in my neighborhood here in Los Angeles. A full resurfacing. I'm not even sure it needed to be resurfaced, but they did it anyway. It's not even in a "nice" neighborhood where you might expect more attentiveness to the roads.

I wonder what to make of the contradiction here.

The most insane thing is 9-12 months to design and construct a curb ramp. There MUST be a standard template they can just stamp out as often as needed. This sounds like some kind of corruption going on, where they're probably paying consultants stupid amounts of money to sign off on something standard.