Joel Hefley: “Boston's Big Dig and Virginia's Mixing Bowl are characterized by cost overruns and boggled timelines. The Big Dig in…”

“Boston's Big Dig and Virginia's Mixing Bowl are characterized by cost overruns and boggled timelines. The Big Dig in Boston has turned into one of our biggest boondoggles. The project which already costs more than twice as much as it did to build the Panama Canal was estimated in 1985 to cost $2.6 billion. Eighteen years later the project still is not completed and the costs are more than $14 billion and are expected to go to $18 billion. So also the cost projections for the Mixing Bowl have tripled with the latest estimate approaching $1 billion. Lax oversight and consistently low estimates of cost and money have also hampered the completion date which was slated for 2007. That slipped. These projects represent huge investments by State, local, and the Federal governments, and Americans have the right to expect Federal projects to be well managed and completed on time and on budget. Because the Federal Highway Administration has done little to stem the runaway spending on these two projects, it gets my 'porker of the week' award.”