I take issue with your thesis. Every day, I ride to work on the Metro Expo line, which was built on time (actually early) and only delayed opening because a private company couldn't get its shit together and build the rail cars on time.
I'll make the case that, as a nation, we're doing fine with the ability to deliver civil infrastructure projects on time and on budget, and to manage them once they are operational, in those regions where they actually care about their infrastructure. See, e.g., LA Metro, Denver's metro, Cleveland's RTA, our utilities grid post-Enron. These are all things done at a scale and density that have been equaled or exceeded only by authoritarian states.
"New York’s Second Avenue Subway cost $2.6 billion per mile... The approximate range of underground rail construction costs in continental Europe and Japan is between $100 million per mile, at the lowest end, and $1 billion at the highest. Most subway lines cluster in the range of $200 million to $500 million per mile."
I think the point is that while you can find your pet example of an over-budget project, other people can find examples of projects that didn't have those problems.
Rushing to post "but what about the Second Avenue Subway" in any thread on this topic is not useful, since you've provided no evidence that it's representative enough to generalize to all infrastructure projects in all cities of all states of the US.
It's well known that infrastructure projects in the US overall cost way more than comparable projects do in most of the rest of the developed world. Here's just one link, from a cursory Google:
LA Metro is quite an expensive program. Cleveland has been working on the cost-coverage-service balance and arguably making the right choices, but not everyone is happy. I think Chicago might be a better example of a large system run efficiently. Overall, there is not any debate whether the US pays more per mile/capita than other countries, just whether that is something that can be improved.
I'll make the case that, as a nation, we're doing fine with the ability to deliver civil infrastructure projects on time and on budget, and to manage them once they are operational, in those regions where they actually care about their infrastructure. See, e.g., LA Metro, Denver's metro, Cleveland's RTA, our utilities grid post-Enron. These are all things done at a scale and density that have been equaled or exceeded only by authoritarian states.