Yeah, I know that feeling well...

It takes far too long to do these things today, and we are paying a huge bill for neglecting our infrastructure needs over the last forty years. Which is why disastrous fiascos, like the mismanagement and incompetence, that are on display, for all to see, at the CAHSRA's "runaway money train", are so destructive to public trust and confidence.

I've spent a good part of my career watching outright corruption, incompetent mismanagement, ego driven political hubris, and pandering to public passion and promotion of willful public ignorance delay and kill dozens of worthwhile and much needed transportation improvements. But, still managed to see some good things get done, reasonably well, like working with Kenny Hahn on the Blue Line, or the work I did in various phases of the development of the Gold Line.

I am relatively optimistic about the changes we've been seeing. As some of the biggest screw ups and failures I've seen are the ones where folks don't or won't face reality, and have no plan B.

When the Feds pulled the plug on two stop 1.5 billion dollar East LA extension of the Red Line subway, only to Soto Street, I was put on a hastily set up team and assigned to take a look at the option of an LRT line as "Plan B".

The Red Line had been intended to go to Atlantic, but it became a "bloated", costly, and overdesigned ever shrinking subway stub, as a result of a flawed planning process (does that sound familiar?).

And, then, within my own lifetime, only a few years later, for just under $900 million, including the section of bored tunnels, we can now all go, all of the way out to Atlantic (identified as the real need in that corridor in the first place....).

So, sometimes good things can happen, if we are able to learn from our mistakes, and come up with a good "Plan B".

IIRC, the Big Dig never ever had any budget identified, for the cross bay Boston connector, even though it was identified, as an option, during the planning processes. It made sense, and would have cost way less to do in conjunction with the "Big Dig", than any stand alone future project to do it, if they had only had the good sense to find the resources and do it.