The introduction to How Big Things Get Done, a new book about how megaprojects should be delivered, tells the cautionary tale of a high-speed rail programme that has veered massively off-track.
Costs ballooned to around three times the initial budget, leading to some drastic cuts being made. Instead of linking two of the nation’s most important cities, the line currently stops short of its end points on both sides, making the whole thing a white elephant.
The project in question isn’t HS2, though. The California High-Speed Rail line was initially meant to link Los Angeles to San Francisco at a cost of $33bn (£27bn), but the most recent estimate puts the cost of its completion at $106bn. A central section is being built in California between Merced and Bakersfield – “two towns most people outside California have never heard of”, author Bent Flyvbjerg points out – but the thorny question of where the High-Speed Rail authority will get the $80bn it still needs to complete the scheme remains unsolved.