[intransigent]

Political quagmires like this only get untangled by terrifying psychos, unfortunately.

People only shut their mouths when they get threatened into a fearful silence, and/or sometimes if they get bribed enough.

Otherwise, you'll always have a substantially sized group of complainers dragging down a project this big, and the complainers leech into operations and mysterious expensive mistakes erode the budget of an already expensive operation.

There's just enough shrug factor here for people to not care about how much gas they burn driving to places that might not be very exciting to begin with.

Many would just as soon not have to travel at all, and even more would prefer to not be taxed so as to pay for trips they personally don't want to take to begin with. Most people just want their actual lives to be generally easier.

Without confrontational intimidation, bribery is probably the only other political lever to press in the United States.