Discussion of why infrastructure development is so extraordinarily costly and slow in NYC: a major part of it is a deliberate creation of a tragedy of the anticommons, where a large number of entities can kill or delay projects for little or no reason.
Exemplified by a case study of Penn Station, one of the most heavily-used train/subway stations in the world, which is universally acknowledged to have been in desperate need of major renovations for well over 30 years (where sewage recently poured through the ceiling), and yet any major renovations seem as distant as when discussions first began.
Entities ranging from the US Postal Service (jealous of its underused rooms) to Amtrak (financial failure) to untrustworthy real estate developers to preservationist activists (in love with a brick wall) to Jim Dolan (owner of Madison Square Garden) to 9/11 (disruption and creating new reasons for US Postal Service intransigence) to the NY State Senate have all conspired to delay and disrupt any progress.