It is incredibly hard to get things done in a fully functioning democracy. Ask us Indians and we know how difficult it has been for us to build any large scale project. First time a road building project was outsourced to private contractors was in 1995. People who wanted to use the road were asked to pay a fee (toll). There was an outcry from media, other political parties. That government lost power and only came back into to power 20 years later and no other big projects happened until then. Right now in Mumbai, one of the densest urban clusterfuck on the face of planet is resisting a rail project which will elevating pains for 5 million people everyday, saving enormous amount of carbon, reduce pollution. And all the resistance in for cutting down 2700 trees, most of which will be transplanted.

See in Australia how difficult it has been to build a high speed rail between Melbourne - Sydney one of the busiest domestic route in the world.

Edit - I dont mean to imply democracies are bad. It is just that things are hard to get done.