Two weeks ago, looking at the burned-out section of I-95 in Philadelphia from above, the safe bet was that this stretch of the East Coast’s most essential arterial would be a traffic nightmare for months to come. The elevated section of the highway had collapsed on June 11 after a tractor trailer flipped over and caught fire.

Instead, on Friday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro unveiled a temporary fix that reopened the six lanes to traffic—albeit at a slower pace for now. “We showed them good government in action,” Shapiro said on Friday. “This is what we can do when government at all levels comes together to get the job done.”

That hasn’t been the predominant narrative around American infrastructure of late, despite President Joe Biden’s focus on the issue. Byzantine regulations and hyperlocal approval processes hamper everything from clean-energy projects to new housing. When even a congestion-pricing scheme in Lower Manhattan—to pay for transit—is subject to 16-month environmental review, the government’s ability to accomplish much of anything in a timely fashion is thrown into doubt.

But if the speed of this particular restoration project is proof of “good government in action” and thus a counterexample, it is not necessarily an easily replicable one. In many ways, the reconstruction of I-95 enjoyed obvious advantages over most other infrastructure projects, especially ambitious efforts such as installing wind turbines or building a new subway line.

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First, rebuilding something that already existed is much simpler than embarking on a new project that will invariably disturb incumbent interests and residents. The consequences of installing a new rail line, or a new highway, can be studied and debated. There wasn’t a call for dialogue about this destroyed portion of I-95: The collapsed highway would either be fixed or not.

“Even if we think about something as small as a bike lane, putting in a new one requires changing the existing road, which comes with all sorts of really fun politics and regulatory processes,” Katherine Levine Einstein, an associate political-science professor at Boston University, told me. “Whereas rebuilding something that already exists is politically easier to do.”

Beyond that, Einstein said, the two central obstacles to new infrastructure projects are funding and regulatory hurdles. In this case, both were swept aside.

The federal government offered full funding for the project, so money was no object. Shapiro signed an emergency declaration that cleared the path for swift approvals and no-bid contracting. The local, state, and federal governments were all rowing in the same direction.

The Philadelphia collapse is not the only recent example of a fire destroying a discrete chunk of highway and the public sector rallying to set things right. In 2017, a highway collapsed in Atlanta after an intense blaze below it and was rebuilt in six weeks. A section of I-95 in Philadelphia was badly damaged by flames in 1996, too, but reopened with a temporary fix after a week.

“That type of temporary construction in two weeks is certainly an impressive feat, but it’s not unprecedented,” David King, an urban-planning professor at Arizona State University, told me. “When there’s a catastrophic collapse, we’re actually pretty good at rebuilding quickly, and something like I-95 is simply too vital a link to leave broken for any length of time.”

The incident stands out for occurring on one of the nation’s most heavily trafficked highways, in one of its largest cities. The Philadelphia region is also essential for Biden’s political ambitions, the centerpiece of Democratic strength in Pennsylvania. He happened to be in town shortly after the conflagration for the first rally of his reelection bid. “I told the governor there’s no more important project right now in the country as far as I’m concerned,” Biden told the press after taking an aerial tour of the site.

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The sheer scale of political and media attention ratcheted up the pressure to get this right, quickly. The moment was met with the attention of a new, and ambitious, governor who used the crisis as a showcase for his leadership. Really, he had no alternative.

“When there’s a catastrophic collapse, the elected officials who are in charge get blamed for it whether it’s their fault or not,” King said. “So there’s only political downside to dallying, and there’s only political upside to getting it done. That’s a rare combination.”

Shapiro has been a rising star in the Pennsylvania Democratic firmament for more than a decade, and since winning last fall’s gubernatorial election in a landslide, he’s sought to become a commanding presence in the commonwealth.

The governor quickly established himself as a regular at the I-95 site. In his emergency declaration, he promised to “cut through the red tape.” Photos of him stoically looking down from a police helicopter made the rounds on Twitter, and he lavished praise on the Philadelphia building-trades unions, whose members were put to work night and day to fix the roadway. A 24/7 livestream allowed people to remotely view progress, and meme about it.

Shapiro’s commitment to the reconstruction quickly paid dividends. He won praise for his decisive action from local leaders, including Philadelphia Republicans. (He was aided by the contrast with his gubernatorial predecessor, an unglamorous technocrat, and Philadelphia’s limelight-allergic mayor.)

The editorial board of The Philadelphia Inquirer (the newspaper where I work) joined in the chorus of praise for Shapiro’s performance, but asked that political leaders pay similar attention to other crises in the city.

Some of the examples the board cited also feature infrastructure that is already in place: the city’s crumbling and asbestos-ridden historic school buildings and the beleaguered Market-Frankford elevated-train line, the workhorse of Philadelphia’s mass-transit system.

Even post-pandemic, with ridership less than half of what it was in 2019, the rail line transports 170,000 people each day—more than the number who use the flame-scarred segment of I-95. But Pennsylvania leadership has displayed no urgency to ensure that SEPTA, the Philadelphia area’s transit agency, has the resources to replace its aging railcars.

[Peter A. Shulman: What infrastructure really means]

That highlights the last factor that helped with I-95’s near-instant restoration: Automobile infrastructure has long been privileged over other modes of transit in America. When a passenger-train line between two of the largest cities in California was severed, the wait time for a solution, even a temporary one, was measured in months, not weeks.

“We love highways; we love roads,” Einstein said. “And so the resources were really readily available for this piece of infrastructure.” Until “government at all levels” decides to show some love to other ways of getting around, the I-95 restoration will be the exception to the rule of American infrastructural sclerosis.