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Something that YIMBY/Abundance types occasionally trot out to explain the exorbitant costs, incessant delays, and general fecklessness of big infrastructure projects in the Anglosphere, especially HSR, is the idea that common law property rights and eminent domain make it exceedingly difficult for the state to claim all the land necessary for development, as every landholder bargains individually and has an incentive to hold out as long as possible for the highest price.
I have no idea if this hypothesis is true; I think the diagnosed phenomenon—viz. that English-speaking countries are terrible at building HSR, even compared to much poorer European countries like Spain and Italy—is real, but a priori my vague sense is that eminent domain considerations are at most a rounding error compared to the sheer volume of regulations that must be followed, as well as, in some jurisdictions, labor unions fleecing the unsuspecting taxpayer.
Could an Ontario to Québec railway be a natural experiment for this hypothesis? That is, since Québécois law is derived from continental-style civil law, they should, per this hypothesis, be able to build their side of the railway cheaper/faster than the Anglophones can. But here again, my vague sense is that public-sector construction in Québec (and perhaps the Francophonie in general?) is subject to even more graft and corruption than in the English-speaking world (cf. L’affaire SNC-Lavalin).
But if the project is to be carried out under the aegis of the federal government, I guess this is all a moot point.
If you haven't been following Canadian politics, Carney is essentially creating the legal apparatus for large projects - "projects of national interest" - to essentially bypass most pre-existing regulation constraining infrastructure development. While he has said he is committed to keeping the burdensome regulations imposed by the previous Trudeau government (bill C-69 is the one to google if you want some background info), there is now the legal process in place for the federal and provincial governments to sidestep those almost completely. The upcoming Bill C-15 may go even farther in giving many private companies the ability to do the same.
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The YIMBY/Abundance types will constantly point out that this was a policy/culture choice that happened in the latter part of the 20th century.
We used to be just fine at massive public works projects, including railroads.
It's not an inherent feature of the common law, and in fact typically involves the violation of property rights due to e.g. environmental concerns. What changed is the regulatory environment.
Nothing proves this more than the fact it is extremely difficult to build green energy in California because of environmental regulations.
I thought the bulk of US (and, for that matter, British) rail construction in the 19th century was due to the private sector, not public works, hence the rise of the so-called robber barons.
But this doesn’t really contradict your main point: in those days, the law was written/interpreted in ways favorable to rail companies and their interests, and thus they had free rein to “build, baby, build”. Nowadays, any legislator who proposed such a pro-growth regulatory environment would be raked over the coals as a corporate shill in the pocket of Big Business.
I wish Noah Smith, Matt Yglesias, and the rest of the YIMBY/Abundance gang the very best of luck in threading that particular needle in California. They’re gonna need it.
The railroads themselves were built by private operators, but they typically involved some level of state involvement; usually in order to acquire the rights-of-way they were built on either the land was seized and then granted/sold to them by the government, or they were granted limited powers of eminent domain by the state. So in either case they were still operating within a similar legal environment. In Canada and the US the government was fond of subsidizing railway development by offering massive land grants that the railway companies could then develop/flip/use to their purposes.
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It's clearly a policy choice to take continually expanding First Nations' claims (one of the blockers for infrastructure in Canada) seriously. Granted, it's not purely a legislative decision - the judiciary has its role here. But nobody forced Trudeau to enshrine these rights even further by rolling the UNs view of native rights into law and making it a part of his administration (even after he left Canada was paying off claims)
Environmentalists help it along by cynically claiming FN have an absolute right of veto, which conveniently suits their interests.
Certainly so far Carney has established very different messaging with respect to First Nations' involvement in infrastructure projects. It's been made very clear they no longer have a veto, and that the duty to consult does not mean the duty to acquire their consent. We'll see what that actually looks like in action, and at some point the courts are going to wade in and have their say, but the flip from the Trudeau government is quite notable - so far.
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But French infrastructure is also much cheaper than Anglosphere infrastructure; it’s possible that the graft and corruption is a form of paying thé piper due to it being much cheaper than delays, or the whole problem is way overblown.
I think that the much more relevant cultural difference is that France and a lot of the other mainland European transit agencies/governments have retained significant state capacity. They have much greater institutional knowledge on how to design and build projects, and these institutions have some degree of political and financial independence that shields them from long-term uncertainty and partisan politics. They do not need to outsource very basic functions of their mandate to private companies, nor are reliant on politicians to provide them funding or direction.
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