> In California, it's been 15 years and we have 0 miles complete.
California had only 10 permanent employees on its HSR project, everyone else was a contractor. Furthermore, "Interest groups wield CEQA and NEPA like weapons. One study found that 85 percent of CEQA lawsuits were filed by groups with no history of environmental advocacy. The NIMBY attitude of these groups has crippled the ability of California to build anything." [0]
Other governments do not have to take the same approach. The choice is not limited to "be California or be a dictatorship", there are thousands of examples of states taking both a long and short time to do things, regardless of how autocratic they are. Another example from that article, "The Netherlands has strong unions, but the Port of Rotterdam has been automated to an extent that has proven impossible in the U.S. due to union resistance." - if you'd like to know more about how that went, see what the Port of Rotterdam has been doing [1] and what the union ultimately got for their strike action [2] - spoiler alert, they did not stop the increasing pace of automation, as US unions seem to have managed.
> Also built numerous hospitals during pandemic in a couple weeks.
So did the UK government, and then had to close them all as they weren't useful. Haste made waste. "As of 5 May 2020, six of the seven planned hospitals had opened, and by the following month all had been placed on standby. [...] almost all of the increased demand for critical care was met by expanding capacity in existing hospitals. By June, all the temporary hospitals had been placed on standby. Only two had admitted patients" [3]
> Demolished and replaced a bridge in 43 hours
This is normal these days for reasonably small spans [4]
> You just have to quash special interests sometime. Autocracy gets shit done.
You don't have to go to one extreme or another, you can allow your citizens rights and still build rapidly. Certainly, there are tradeoffs, and it depends on the history and traditions of your own country, as to what your citizens will accept. Sometimes regulations get in the way of progress. Sometimes, lack of regulations kill and maim your citizens and destroy their lives, and their childrens' lives. [5] There's no single good ideological approach that works best.
[0] https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/06/09/why-america-cant-bui...
[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/rotterdam-port-ships-automat...
[2] https://www.fnvhavens.nl/component/content/article?id=317:ag...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_hospitals_in_the_Unit...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_bridge_replacement
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal