It’s really the National Environmental Policy Act. (…though it looks so dense, you’d want a case of that other kind of NEPA to help you get through it all).
If only 
If 45’s “Infrastructure Week” were actually real, then maybe…
but as of today, it seems like any infrastructure project on American soil have to follow federal law and:
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Perform and fail an environmental assessment (EA). Unless a Categorical Exclusion lets you skip even this step, you’ll probably end up with a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) and be allowed to carry on with doing what you were going to do. But if you find out there’s existing or potential environmental risks with your project, you won’t get a FONSI. Instead, you’ll need to…
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Write up an EIS. This takes years, up to 300 pages of writing, and 10~30% of an entire project’s budget. It’s this big of a monster simply because of how thorough you need to be, plus how everyone from private citizens and landowners to state/federal governments get a say.
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Let the public comment on it for a given amount of time. …though not a lot of citizens actually do that, plus project leads don’t seem to be mandated to respond to every single comment?
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Release a Record of Decision (RoD) to say everyone who cares about the EIS saw it and are cool with it.
(not a lawyer: I just read the EPA’s websites, Wikipedia, and the stuff they linked to)
In general, from seeing what the Durham light rail attempt and the several BRT projects around the Triangle did, it seems like these are the fundamental questions that have to be answered with evidence to get shovels into the ground, in order:
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Do we have a problem that deserves a big solution? (MIS/Major Investment Study)
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What’s our solution, vaguely? (project development) This includes…
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What ideas do we have, and do they make sense? (AA/alternatives analysis)
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Is there a need (market) for the(se) solution(s)? (market analysis)
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What does our idea cost us, aside for money? (EA/EIS - what we’re talking about)
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What’s our idea, and do we really want to make it happen? (LPA/locally-preferred alternative)
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Is this on our local to-do list? (adoption into fiscally constrained long-range transportation plan)
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What exactly do we build, and how? (engineering and design)
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Do we have all the money we need to pay for it? (funding commitments)
If we want things to go faster, then this workflow is what you’ll want to address.
(…but also notice that there’s a reason to do all of those things)