>> I'm sure they'd love to pursue perfection if they were paid decent wage and not pressured to be as fast / cheap as possible.

That and depending where you live, there's next to no money for road work.

At the local county govt I worked at, the first department that would get gutted was the highway department. It can easily cost millions to redo a few miles of road, and you need to fix a bridge that doesn't get used much (but it is becoming a hazard because it's been neglected for so long), magically most of the road budget is already gone for that year. Now add in the unknowns like salt prices, the equipment to do anything, maintenance, and everything else that comes with it.

Things here become "just good enough" because no one wants an increase in taxes to pay for it.

I want to believe that isn't the case for every local govt, but it is for the few smaller ones I've worked with around here.