That’s what I ask myself. I‘D guess all those challenges exist elsewhere too but at different scales?
The ignorance of international best practices is just imperial disease, a special case of not invented here. I honestly struggle to think of a technology or industry the US has lost leadership in and then recovered but it’s not like Germany is doing well in electrical vehicles. Sometimes your time is past, like the US and semiconductors.
The political and administrative sclerosis is unlikely to get better fast without the kind of pressing need that results in a new constitutional settlement. It could get better slowly I suppose. The inward looking self regard will get better when the US sees itself as an excellent country rather than assuming they’re the best at everything.
I'd wager that the democratic decision process in Switzerland is far more stringent and the public is far more involved.
On every level, be it a local tram line, a canton wide, or intra-cantonal rail system, or projects of national importance and great expense, like [1], the public is virtually always consulted via referendum and has to green light the project.
This is also a huge strength of the system. Because once a project is approved, the funds are secured and politicians can't pull shenanigans to pull, or divert funding.
I'd wager that a high democratic involvment into major (and expensive) projects is rather an asset, than a liability.
For example, even in big cities like NYC, there are public meetings about the projects, etc. Yet, I still believe that past certain point, people just stop either caring or not having the energy to follow thru the whole process.
Just a side note, it might sound pedantic but after living in Scandinavia, one thing I noticed that the expectation of “participation” during the decision making is not same even here. I bring this up because somewhat it contributes for more or less polarization and inefficient processes, I’d say.
As trust goes, I am not sure if it is any different than most of countries in Europe except maybe Scandinavia?
For international best practices, at least in my subsection within IT, the US is the main driver for it. Most of people I talk to in terms of regulation see the US as its own jurisdiction but it is not like things there don’t make sense from a regulatory stand point, but they are just different?
Anyways, those are just simple observations.
UK underground is ancient, it's part of the fabric of culture, the UK is the birthplace of real rail, maybe they just have a centralized org to pull that off. Maybe they have a historical entente with unions. Maybe for whatever reasons there's less graft. Maybe it's just not politicized. Maybe it's just a lot easier for 'right of way' - or there are ample underground facilities. Maybe they just make things smaller (ie stations) so it's easier.
I find these situations are very enlightening, because it doesn't boil down to a scrum vs. waterfall or static vs. reactive kind of thing ... it's just 'really complicated'.
It's also very frustrating obviously and makes one very cynical of all of the dopes in charge.
I would love to vote for a super competent non-populist city administrator who said 'these are the operational reforms I am going to make', i.e. a leader who's not actually a politician.