[p911dad]

I spent a career in roadbuilding and infrastructure, so I can speak to public improvement. There was a time a highway or bridge could go through a quick planning phase, design phase and ROW acquistion in a fairly short time, relative to today. There were so many abuses of this approach, jamming roads through neighborhoods and wetlands cutting them in half that eventually people got fed up with it and the pendulum went the other way, far to the other way. In the old days, the surveyors would lay out the alignment and everything in between would get leveled. Now it twists and turns through all the various obstacls like cemetaries, wetlands, Indian sites, historically significant things, etc. For the last 30+ years or so the planning and public hearing phases, predesign and design phases, ROW acquisition, environmental research and objections, lawsuits, etc. put a brand new road location or bridge out at least 10 years from idea to concrete. All this drives costs up. This is all with heavy Federal oversight because the Feds usually pay 80% or so of the tab and without their phase approvals, the project will not go forward until they are happy. All this is very expensive and getting worse. It's so expensive now that States and locals have trouble budgeting their "share" (20%) of the total so projects get delayed or shelved forever.