[supertrope]

This is a feature not a bug. We have a system of government designed to prevent abuse not to maximize project completion.

We like low taxes so we need voters to either directly approve a project’s budget or politicians who approve the budget need to keep getting re-elected. Politicians know that increasing taxes during their term for a project that will be completed after their term or career is a difficult sell. We Starve the Beast so we don’t have a Ministry of Transportation with career workers but rather everything is contracted out. We like federalism instead of a unitary state to avoid the problem of distant inaccessible decision makers. But then any projects that cross jurisdiction boundaries require the equivalent of negotiating a treaty. And each town controls zoning and can refuse to give up land unless they get a stop. Rural areas are overrepresented in Senates. We have environment review, lawsuits, and anti-racism laws so the little guy doesn’t get steamrolled like in the Robert Moses era. But this slows down projects tremendously.

When there is a strong mandate things get done.

[V_Terranova_Jr]

It's a bug. Nowhere in any of the rationale you lay out is there anything about competence and active involvement/oversight on the part of the government. Neither major political party in the U.S. focuses on this, though the Republican mentality is largely that the government can never be competent. However, at a minimum, the government is the buying agent of the people in procuring infrastructure or infrastructure improvements. It sets the requirements, oversees execution, and signs off on the delivered products. Companies perform work, but their interests are not aligned with the interests of the taxpayers. Incompetent or unempowered government employees cannot prevent the abuse of the taxpayer by companies, nor can they establish boundary conditions for successful project completion. The checks you indicate, e.g., environmental review, are procedural devices that can have radically different outcomes depending on the competence of government employees.

The U.S. system will not get appreciably better until we focus on government competence. The layperson's go-to explanation for these outcomes is something in the tree of corruption but the truth is likely closer to Hanlon's razor.

[ncmncm]

Sometimes.

The replaced I-35 bridge went up fast. It would have cost radically less to maintain the old one properly.