Noah writes of the speedy repairs to the I-95 overpass that collapsed in Pennsylvania. Governor Josh Shapiro is taking a victory lap, and it’s deserved. It’s a good thing for the people of Pennsylvania that the state government managed this crisis well.

But when he says things such as, “We can get big things done around here — and we can build things quickly and safely. When we work together, we can show Pennsylvanians how government can work for them,” I think he should be expected to prove that when the spotlight isn’t on him. Pennsylvania highways rank 41st in the country, according to Reason Foundation’s Annual Highway Report. They ranked 39th in each of the three preceding years. The report looks at factors such as maintenance costs, pavement conditions, and bridge safety to make its ratings.

This bridge collapse was not due to poor maintenance; a truck accident caused a fire that caused the collapse. But we don’t need government to do big things only when an accident happens. The day-to-day stuff is important, too.

Pennsylvania doesn’t rank poorly because it has a very large highway network (fifth-largest by number of lane-miles). Virginia has the third-largest state highway network, and it ranked first in the report. South Carolina’s highway network is roughly the same size as Pennsylvania’s, and it ranked sixth. The report adjusts for the amount of roadway that states have to maintain so large states aren’t penalized in the ratings. And it’s not because of the weather in its region. Neighboring Ohio ranks 17th. Much colder Minnesota ranks twelfth, and North Dakota ranks ninth.

Pennsylvania has very high costs for building, partly because it’s a heavily unionized blue state. (Shapiro has made sure to praise unions in his tweets about the bridge repairs.) As I wrote in a piece last year, the bipartisan infrastructure law’s bridge program ended up being a bailout for blue states because it took states’ costs as a given when allocating funding. Rather than reward states that perform well, it sent more money to states that perform poorly. Pennsylvania was one of them.

With that extra money, and Shapiro’s stated commitment to getting big things done, it would be good for Pennsylvanians to see improvements in their highways every day, not just during a crisis. As Noah wrote, slow construction is a choice.

As I’ve written before, Americans should be more upset about infrastructure inefficiency. Many things are out of policy-makers’ control, but the speed with which public infrastructure is built is entirely up to them. There’s no inherent technological reason that projects have to take forever. Building a highway overpass should always be done in two weeks. It’s really not that difficult, especially in the richest country in the world.

Developing countries, which don’t yet have the luxury of expansive highway networks, understand why speeding up construction is important. Highway construction has been a priority of the Indian government’s development strategy. As I have noted before:

The Indian transportation minister has made a promise to build 100 kilometers of highway per day. That’s a longshot, and the Indian government’s M.O. is overpromising and underdelivering. But India did actually build 37 kilometers of brand new highway per day last year. They set a world record by laying 2,580 meters of four-lane highway in 24 hours. It’s probably much easier to build fast at Indian standards, and Americans should expect better quality for their highways. But the wealthiest country on the face of the earth should be able to build better highways at least half as fast as India.

A project for a new stack interchange in Delhi was scheduled to take only 90 days, and it was completed this month eleven days ahead of schedule. In March, India opened a brand-new 73-mile expressway that reduced travel times from 3 hours to 75 minutes at a cost of around $1 billion.

In the U.S., it cost about $3.7 billion (and took four years) to widen 22 miles of already-existing I-66 in Virginia. (And remember, Virginia has the best highway network of any U.S. state, according to the Reason Foundation report.) In Maryland, environmental and historic-preservation groups are suing to block a plan to add toll lanes on I-495 and I-270, two of the most congested highways in the Washington, D.C., region. “The motion, filed in federal court in Maryland, argues that the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration failed to provide a candid assessment of damage that the 15-mile project would create along the busy corridor,” the Washington Post reports.

There’s already a highway there. We know what the environmental impact is. There are already toll lanes on the same I-495 in neighboring Virginia. This project was first proposed by former Maryland governor Larry Hogan six years ago, but it hasn’t even started yet because U.S. laws allow random interest groups to stall any project they want.

Slow construction is a choice. As Noah said, let’s make different choices. Governor Shapiro seems interested in efficiency, and he has performed well in this crisis. We have all seen that projects don’t have to take forever. He should keep the momentum going and push for permanent reforms to improve Pennsylvania’s highways and provide a model for other states to speed up construction projects.