But it also seems ridiculous to skip since four people doing nothing but having a discussion about a new rule for 30 minutes across a good portion of those businesses is easily $100mil w/o them even having to lift a pinky besides.
A minute of internet research suggests that specific $100m figure is from a 45-year-old law[1]. I don't know why every government law and regulation that references specific monetary values like this aren't pegged to inflation. That equivalent value today is almost $400m.
EDIT: Actually the number might come from a 29-year-old amendment[2]. It is disappointing how hard it is to track these things down.
[1] - https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/rulemaking/flexibil...
[2] - https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/senate-bill/942
It's an utter mess. This job falls primarily to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who compiles the basket of goods that make up the Consumer Price Index - but this doesn't include food or fuel, for example.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis also maintains several indices which are used as inflation proxies when it's convenient (and which are most often used by the various working groups within the federal reserve system to, eg, determine interest rates). But these are somewhat more volatile and more subject to fluctuations due to international political affairs, etc.
The most obvious metric - the literal inflation in the money supply - is also tricky because the process by which money is created is so baroque.
The ability to have more coherent laws which reference amounts of money is a good reason to adopt sounder and more transparent practices in monetary policy.
It's conceivable for the installation of traffic lights in a remote place to be an expensive project if there's no power available there, but that's a much larger project than just a single traffic light.