WHY NOT: Why Does American Infrastructure Cost More and Take Longer To Build Than It Used To? A series of laws passed in the 1970s may have permanently hamstrung American infrastructure development. “Brooks and Liscow pinpoint the early 1970s as the inflection point for increased spending on highway projects. What was happening around that time? The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires environmental impact review for federally funded projects, was passed in 1970. California passed its considerably more stringent CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) the same year, and it was signed by none other than Gov. Ronald Reagan. In 1972 and 1973, Congress added additional federal laws that provided key leverage in fighting construction projects on the basis of loss of species habitat and wetlands. The U.S. Supreme Court helped out with the 1971 case of Citizens To Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, which multiplied the chances to go to court over development by curtailing judges’ deference to agency decision making. All of these laws and decisions have made it much easier for citizens to contest infrastructure projects, driving up their cost and delaying their implementation and completion.”

1970 was the year of the “Regulatory Explosion” under Nixon.

Plus, the higher the income the area, the greater the delay because richer people are better at delaying things:

Somewhere, though, the late William Tucker is smiling. In “Environmentalism and the Leisure Class,” an influential 1977 Harper’s Magazine essay later expanded into the 1982 book Progress and Privilege, Tucker argued that the environmentalist banner, when waved against local development, offers a conveniently genteel way to “favor the status quo” for those whose “material comfort under the present system has been more or less assured.”

Indeed.