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Comment by raldi | Hacker News Reader

Can't blame unions, considering how easily Europe gets it done. Most likely issue is that in the US, every landowner and minor municipality is empowered to delay and obstruct these projects and thus milk them.

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Yea I would definitely like to know what the response is to eminent domain in other countries where its working better. I've never been in that situation and I can totally understand the resistance to losing your property, but I can't see American's being particularly unique in that feeling. Maybe the laws are just more permissive in the US for contesting the government.

In California specifically there are also environmental regulations like CEQA that provide another avenue for blocking such things, independent of eminent domain issues. Even if someone is building on their own land, lots of environmental review is required, and individuals or groups can sue on the basis that such review was inadequate. This ties things up for a long time. There are legitimate reasons to want environmental review, but the way it works in CA now, CEQA is largely just a tool people use to delay projects they don't want.

Most countries has that but it still doesn't take many decades to build a simple piece of railway.

Details matter. Most countries have environmental laws, but their teeth differ.

Polish environmental law is quite notorious for being deliberately easy on developers (at least outside national parks), which translates into a lot of construction activity.

OTOH Californian CEQA is such a NIMBY/BANANA weapon of mass anti-construction that I have heard of it, despite being located a third of a world away.

Both sound like intent.

unions in the US aren't necessarily even comparable to in EU.

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