The Metro Gold Line Extension is 87% complete and Metro has bragged that "the $899 million project is ahead of schedule, under budget, and has logged 3.4 million hours of construction without a lost time injury, an unprecedented safety record for a major public works project."This is great news. I also find this interesting in light of one of the most pervasive arguments made by opponents to the California High-Speed Rail project. Opponents to public rail projects, such as the oil money backed libertarian think tank the Reason Foundation, are fond of saying that any government works project will always be behind schedule and over budget. Opponents like to make up numbers based on their ideas of government waste, rather than offering any real supporting evidence. This has led to claims as ridicules as the project would go $60 billion over budget and likely never be finished.
Over at the California High Speed Rail Blog they took a piece from the Colbert playbook to discuss truth versus truthiness in these arguments against the HSR project. So the next time you hear someone say in a Dr. Evil tone that this train is going to cost 100 billion dollars, you can call them out on their bull shit.
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