[Traster]

Yeah my first reaction to this was "Oh it's going to be the public". Because the US has strong rights and legal system basically anyone can come along and considerably screw up a project just by claiming some endangered bat is living in the path of it, or some economic harm will be done, or some community will be damaged, it's far easier to just to just stick planning notice on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'

A great example of this is in the UK where the main road going east to west from london to cornwall is a single carriage way with 2 lanes going past one of the country's most historic sites (stone henge). It's a fucking disaster. So the plan is to build a massive tunnel under stone henge to help traffic and remove the blotch on this area of historic importance. It's expected to cost £1.7Bn but it's already been completely tied up in legal fights, it was proposed over 25 years ago (when it was already desparately needed). Essentially plenty of people either don't want it built at all (presumably just accepting that we'll never ever be able to have economic in england west of stonehenge) or they want a tunnel that is several times longer than the proposal sending costs and construction time soaring.

What you could do, if you were Turkey, you could just built a 12 lane motorway and shove stonehenge a few miles north. It'd be cheaper.

[Cederfjard]

Stonehenge isn’t that big. I don’t know what the surrounding area is like, but isn’t it an option to build the road around it? With compulsory purchases of properties along the way, if necessary.

[zipswitch]

I've had the same thought.

I confess to not having closely followed the issue, but every time I see it mentioned, my brain twitches. Is the choice between A) large construction project that overlaps with a site of immense historical and cultural significance, and B) spend the money for a couple extra miles of freeway, seems to be a very obvious one. The only reason I can see for B is a sort of aggressive anti-humanism.