Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/the-interstate-gridlock-why-u-s-highway-construction-takes-5x-longer-than-anywhere-else/
There is something deeply unsettling about watching a Dutch construction crew build an entire highway overpass over a single weekend while Americans debate the environmental paperwork for a two-mile road extension that has been in limbo since 2019. It feels almost fictional. Yet this is the reality of infrastructure in the United States in 2026, a country that once built its legendary Interstate Highway System and now struggles to add a lane to an existing one.
The gap between America and the rest of the world when it comes to highway construction speed is staggering. It is not a minor difference. It is systemic, layered, and surprisingly hard to fix. Buckle up, because what follows is a journey through the bureaucratic, financial, and political jungle that turns simple asphalt into a decade-long ordeal.
A Price Tag That Defies Logic
Let’s be real: when you hear that the U.S. is spending three times more per mile on road construction than comparable countries, your first instinct might be to assume America is just building better roads. That instinct is wrong. Building infrastructure in the U.S. costs substantially more than in other countries – on a per-mile basis, the U.S. spends three times as much as other upper- and middle-income countries on certain transportation infrastructure.
State and local governments expended $266 billion on highways alone in 2022, and on a per-project basis, that spending is over…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-04-05 19:31:00
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