Case Studies

Real megaprojects, torn down to the schedule.

Every date and dollar figure below comes from a public oversight report -- GAO, a state auditor, or an inspector general -- never estimated or invented. Sources are cited inline in each piece.

• California High-Speed Rail: A Schedule Teardown

  From a $33 billion, 2020-completion promise to a project whose own Inspector General says its 2031 target is already at risk -- what the public record shows about how a schedule slips this far.

• The Big Dig's Schedule, Analyzed

  A 1998 completion promise that became December 2007 -- what GAO's own contemporaneous reports and the Massachusetts Inspector General's findings reveal about a nine-year slip.