Partly why this is an apples-oranges comparison is that Italy's federal government stepped in to make it happen (planning, land acquisition, funding, establishi

Partly why this is an apples-oranges comparison is that Italy's federal government stepped in to make it happen (planning, land acquisition, funding, establishing federally-owned corporate structure). In the US, projects like this are governed just as much by states as they are the federal government, and since the 1970s we've had a strong and entrenched culture of not having the federal government step in to exert its will on a system to produce a public good. There's a reason why Obamacare was so fraught and ultimately led to a political downfall of the democrats: it spit in the face of private and state interests (from their perspective) to undercut what they'd grown to do in the previous 40 years. This good, but ultimately half-hearted measure, is only a fraction of the kind of political willpower needed to transform the federal state into something that can build infrastructure again.