The larger issue, of course, is that eccentric individuals and niche special-interest groups are able to use the planning process and the legal system to jam up all sorts of infrastructure projects in America, from simple turn lanes all the way to high-speed rail. This is not the only reason America has trouble building infrastructure, but it is an important reason. See Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson‘s new book Abundance for a long-form analysis of this… or for a contrast with the US’s “lawyerly society” (and, of course, the disadvantages of leaning too much in the other direction) Dan Wang’s Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future that just came out.

Both are excellent books and will probably appeal to a lot of Hacker News folks with an engineering/builder mindset.