Why does it take an emergency for the U.S. to expedite infrastructure projects?

In June 2023, a gasoline fire destroyed a miles-long stretch of the I-95 and brought one of the East Coast’s busiest interstates to a halt. Experts anticipated that rebuilding would take several months; in a "legendary if unlikely triumph of American infrastructural prowess,” repairs took 12 days, Sara Herschander writes for Vox. Herschander goes on to pose the question: “Why can’t America always build with such precise, even delightful, speed?”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s emergency declaration played a large role in the speed of the project. Vox reports:

Shapiro’s emergency order “waived everything, literally everything,” said Stephanie Pollack, a leading expert on transportation policy and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School. Suddenly, with that order in hand, she said, officials like [Mike Carroll, Pennsylvania’s transportation secretary] knew: “I can buy things I couldn’t buy. I can contract in ways I couldn’t contract. I don’t have to worry about permits. I don’t have to worry about work hours,” she said. “And that, to me, is the lesson of I-95. It’s not that emergencies make things happen; it’s that throwing everything out makes things happen.”

The I-95 repair project was allowed to break the rules, enabling it to blast through the red tape that constrains so many other projects in America. “If the US wants to fix more highways, build more train lines, or paint more bike lanes more quickly, it will need to get better at knowing when to break these rules more often, and not only when there’s an emergency,” Herschander writes. Pollock believes that the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, which aims to expedite large energy projects, is a step in the right direction.