[jackp96]

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson tackle this specific example (along with others) in their book Abundance that came out last year. It's a pretty easy read, and a really interesting examination of why projects like this struggle.

But as other commenters have pointed out — a lot of it is NIMBYism (plus a heavy dose of overregulation).

Conservatives tend to point at projects like this as examples of why our incompetent government shouldn't be allowed to build large projects.

But other countries can do this (including a good chunk of Europe), so I think it's really valuable to dig in and understand why we struggle.

[BrenBarn]

Ironically it is largely because of private actors (those NIMBYs) that such things wind up being slow and expensive.

[insane_dreamer]

> overregulation

Europe and Japan are much more regulated than the US, and yet, they build rail just fine over there.