[artemonster]

please add "super hard mode in germany" - you want to build new station? fill out 120423423 forms, 10 years of waiting, 35 lawsuits from NIMBY retirees, 312 lawsuits from environment protection agency, and after thats passed you run out of money or baloon your initial budget 10x.

[rsynnott]

Pft. Dublin's first underground metro (you could maybe vaguely argue that the surface-level/elevated DART is a metro-alike; it fits into the same not-quite-commuter-rail category as an S-Bahn) just finally got its railway order (planning permission), 24 years after it was first proposed and 17 years after the first application (though the south surface portion will not be built, as it would have required the closure of like three level crossings of the existing tram line that it would have used, and enough people complained that they gave up). All going well, it will be done around 2035, but realistically there will probably be a judicial review or two which will knock it back to 2040. All this is assuming that there isn't another recession; if there is funding will of course immediately be withdrawn.

[brewdad]

Laughs in American. You can do all of that and one Karen who lives 300 miles from the project site and who has time to attend a 10am meeting on a random Tuesday gets the whole thing shut down.