The transcontinental railroad was built without modern heavy equipment. Today fewer people can get a lot more work done even with humane working conditions and

The transcontinental railroad was built without modern heavy equipment. Today fewer people can get a lot more work done even with humane working conditions and modern safety code. Which helps explain humane working conditions and modern safety code. As to regulations, in 2023 an I-95 bridge failed after a gasoline tanker truck fire. They took 12 days to get a temporary replacement that got traffic flowing again. You occasionally see such projects where we need a fix now and then it happens. However, it was a temporary replacement and they needed an actual long term solution. The difference between such rapid projects and more typical ones include time consuming steps to preventing dirt from settling and causing problems in the future etc. Regulations are filled with such tradeoffs, but that doesn't mean we're unable to move more quickly just that we can afford to do something else.