Note that Italy is not perfect. And like all cases of corruption it is worse in some areas than others. The construction costs project is about mass transit where Italy does fairly well, but they don't look at highways so we cannot say anything about how they do highways from the data here. (I'm sure someone reading this knows more than I do about Itally's highways and can comment)

The problem is that (like in many areas) our collective subjective memory of things lags behind reality, sometimes by decades.

Things get enshrined deep in culture (not only films, but day to day jokes and mechanical repetition of cultural self-flagellation).

I'm living in Italy for almost 20y now, coming from Switzerland. I came here in part because I wanted the experience of a more chaotic place, coming from the extreme order in Switzerland I found confining and suffocating.

Central Italy in the 2000s was a good mixture of chaos and infrastructure that worked ok in order to have a civilized life. Roads had potholes but they did exist, it's wasn't Madagascar level bad.

Yet italians complained and complained and kept saying that they were backward country and looked up at Germany or the Netherlands or whatnot.

Over the years everything got incrementally improved. Roundabouts got built, green grass inside roundabouts got actually cut, parking spaces started to be delimited and you no longer had to park your car in the mud alongside a road (but now you had to pay for parking in more places) ...

And also trains got better! Objectively better. And more expensive. They were incredibly dirt cheap 20 years ago, now they are not too expensive but it's an entirely different ballpark.

20 years ago my average experience from Pisa to Florence was to suffocate for 50 minutes because somebody let a puddle of vomit uncleaned in the train and there was no physical space to go to escape that because the train was so packed.

Now trains are much cleaner, more frequent, bigger, faster, ...

Occasionally you get stuck in a tunnel for a couple of hours because something breaks but hey it only happen to me once in the last 10 years and it happened 10 times the decade before, so improvement!!

Yet, locals still think nothing improved. Yesterday I had a conversation with Italians who thought they were the country with the worst infrastructure. The thing is, most people here live in an imaginary world.

Even when they do travel abroad, they don't update their beliefs about that stuff. It's a bit like identity politics. They watch TV journalism shows that show how well executed (cherry picked) public systems in other countries work, and bask in self-flagellation. While the other identity group declares how Italians are the best in the world and that nothing approaches their virtues etc. these two camps (I struggle identifying them as left and right anymore) affect each other and make their position even stronger.

The article contained almost more references about corruption and environmental protests than technical info. I don’t know how other places work, but in Europe, big infrastructure projects are almost always mired with corruption.

The article read like: “wow, these dumb and greasy Italians finally managed to do something impressive. But they are still corrupt. And their project is not eco friendly. Hah, those Italians...” And I’m not even Italian, but I can smell that snobbism from a mile.

Ah, also there was corruption. In Venice.

In the past the legendary motorway Salerno-Reggio Calabria took decades to complete and was a major attraction for public investment and mafia suppliers.

These days, the government is thinking about building a bridge between Calabria and Sicily. This project has been talked about for decades, it's completely useless (I won't go in detail here, but the road network in southern Italy is in a really bad state) and with the upcoming European Union injection of money, it will become the next public work that the mafia will put their hands onto. Looking at the history, it's clear why this project became suddenly important.

Looking at the Corruption Perception Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index), Italy ranks between Saudi Arabia and Rwanda. In Press Freedom, Italy ranks between Botswana and Senegal.

additional source: I'm Italian.

I think it depends heavily on which infrastructure you're talking about though and what parts of the project you're considering. Some countries may be faster at obtaining permits and/or finding the money, and others may be faster at actually building the thing; my impression is that Italy absolutely sucks at the former, but some projects are also slowed down by the sheer amount of archaeological finds that you stumble upon when digging under Rome or Naples.

Italy is really not that bad in absolute, for crying out loud it's the 9th GDP in the world. It all comes down to looking at specific aspects and comparing to its neighbors.

Unfortunately for them, they're not the best at selling their services globally.

Source: I am Italian.

Milan to Rome is about ~350 miles (580 km) and the train takes about 3 hours, compared to a ~6 hour drive. I believe this is about the same distance from LA to SF.

Switzerland: Asphalt is perfect. No potholes, it might be a Formula One track you're on. There's no weeds sticking up. There's no plants growing over the signs or the barriers on the side. Signs themselves are pristine, like they were made today. No debris such as tyres or hubcaps on the roadway, though you do cross a piece of trash every now and again. You also come across the maintenance vehicles that keep all these things clean.

Italy: Not like that.

Most of Europe is like this. Germany is pretty good. France is a bit less decayed than Italy. Denmark is better but still weeds, trash, and potholes. UK is like Denmark, not perfect but you don't get that sense of failed state that you get crossing into Italy.

One social/political thing that always comes to mind is they could hire people to clean things up. They wouldn't be highly paid, but people on low income getting paid could be good for the economy. Italy and France also have reasonably high unemployment rates, so there must be some people who would be willing? And they'd be providing a public good: everyone wants to live in a clean country.