You're talking local and sure if you have enough people, money, and professions(i.e. lawyers) willing to put in the work and for years, sure you can get shit done. My community was able to stop a planned roadway expansion behind it but took 7 years and nearly every lawyer living there to help throw their weight in for many years.

But again, that's local and in small areas. Start trying to get cities, counties, and states to do that and consistently.

I worked with multiple State DOTs and my stories here in Florida DOT are the same in at least 30 other states.

Small municipalities (even business owners)can be a huge fuckin thorn in state projects, especially roadway widening but to do it across the board and constantly and definitely where infrastructure is concerned.... good luck without metric fuck ton of work and the need to have huge portions of the community and frankly most people are too busy working to even know what's going on .