By Steven Greenhut in City Journal

March 11, 2016

San Francisco’s colorful former mayor Willie Brown caused a stir three years ago by writing some disturbing truths about major government infrastructure projects. The city’s Transbay Terminal project—billed as a future “Grand Central Station of the West”—was running $300 million over budget. Brown argued that no one should be shocked by such overruns, and that “we always knew” the estimate was artificially low. “In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment,” he wrote. “If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.”

Brown’s column was—and still is—widely quoted because California officials are busy advancing the largest infrastructure project ever built by the state. The California High Speed Rail project, energized by a statewide ballot initiative in 2008 that provided initial bond funding of $9.95 billion, seems to be exactly the kind of project Brown had in mind.

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