The Hoover Dam was 85 years ago, the moon landing program was 50+ years ago, the interstate buildout was 40-60 years ago.
The disfunctionality of the US at large-scale projects emerged in the 80s, possibly to do with both the creation of the modern Republican agenda by Ailes (divisive populism over bipartisanship, and preference of tax cuts over maintaining infrastructure), and the acceptance of the environmental movement by the Democrats. Maybe also by the illusion that the the demise of the USSR meant the "end of history" and the focus can turn from trying to get the US to be #1 to prying to get a bigger slice of the pie domestically...
See "This Is Why Your Holiday Travel Is Awful: The long, sordid history of New York’s Penn Station shows how progressives have made it too hard for the government to do big things—and why, believe it or not, Robert Caro is to blame" https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/comments/ez0l93/this_is_why_y...
Of course the elephant in the room is money. The public doesn't seem to have enough money to do projects.
One big takeaway point - IMHO - is that there's no scale, no growth in construction. So there's no big market, no new frontier for optimizing it. Sure, there are always a few startups, but that's peanuts.
Where are the trillions of dollars allocated to get good at building things in this century/millenium? Umm, nowhere. (Or basically spent on iPhones, housing and healthcare.) So it's no surprise that everything is custom made, challenged in court, takes forever and costs all the funds available and some.
