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BOSTON (Reuters) - Boston's $15 billion "Big Dig" was meant to inspire awe, an engineering marvel on scale with the Panama Canal that would thrust U.S. cities into a new era. ADVERTISEMENT Instead, it faces a crisis of public confidence after a fatal tunnel collapse that could derail plans for other U.S. urban mega-projects. With 7.5 miles of underground highway and a 183-foot (56 meter) wide cable-stayed bridge, the Big Dig replaced an ailing elevated expressway to fix chronic congestion and reunite downtown Boston with its historic waterfront neighborhoods. But cost overruns, leaks, delays, falling debris, criminal probes and charges...

Business as usual on Big Dig boondoggle By Joe Fitzgerald Boston Herald Columnist Saturday, July 15, 2006 Insanity, according to one insightful definition, is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. That’s us, the populace of Massachusetts, doing what we have always done, which is why we are getting what we have always gotten, except it’s never been more flagrant than what we’re witnessing right now. What makes this Big Dig scandal so atrocious is its scope, not its substance, for corruption, greed and graft are nothing new in Massachusetts. Indeed, we have become so inured...

SACRAMENTO – State lawmakers early Friday approved a series of bills that would place a record public works spending plan before voters in November, reviving a proposal that had broad public support but failed to pass the Legislature earlier this year. The $37.3 billion package would be the largest bond issue in California history and now goes to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor, who proposed an even larger spending plan in January, called the votes in each house “a landmark accomplishment that will yield benefits for generations to come.” “For the first time in a generation, we are making a...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California voters would reject a ballot measure for a $32 billion public works bond if an election were held today, a troubling sign for supporters of such a measure, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, according to survey findings released on Friday. "Overall, 'infrastructure' as an issue ranks low as a priority for voters," according to the survey report by the California Business Properties Association and the California Tribal Business Alliance. The two groups surveyed California voters on a hypothetical infrastructure bond measure and found 52 percent opposed, 43 percent in favor and 5 percent undecided. Schwarzenegger has...

A frenetic last-minute attempt to place a massive public works bond on the June ballot failed late Wednesday, handing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a key legislative defeat in his bid for re-election. The collapse of negotiations over the bond measure came just hours before an administrative deadline to place measures on the primary election ballot. "We ran out of time," Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said, after the Senate passed an urgency bill appropriating $1 billion for levee repairs from the state's reserve fund.

Lawmakers made a last-ditch attempt Monday to reach a deal that would put the largest bond measure in California history on the June ballot - an approximately $50 billion package with money for highways, transit, schools, levees and other public works projects. "I am very hopeful. I think we're very close," said Assembly Budget Committee chairman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz. "It's just fleshing out the absolute final details and making sure everyone from every caucus is on board." Despite such displays of optimism, the legislative process that is required to actually place a measure on the ballot remained in flux....

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Members of a two-house conference committee outlined sharply different priorities Thursday as they began working over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $222.6 billion public works spending plan. "We're all going to have to give up some things" to get an agreement, the chairman, Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Culver City, said after a two-hour hearing during which Republicans and Democrats expressed concerns about Schwarzenegger's proposals. "We're all going to have to give a little and get a little," he said. The Republican governor wants the state to spend $222.6 billion over the next 10 years to upgrade highways, expand intercity rail,...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The multibillion dollar public works program proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will do more than just help California keep pace with a booming population, the governor told a crowd of business leaders Tuesday. It also will be a boon for construction companies and their workers, providing a long-term boost to California's resurgent economy. Schwarzenegger combined two of his favorite themes in an address to 250 business leaders who gathered at the University of Southern California to hear him promote his $222.6 billion public works package: job growth and the need to rebuild California's aging roads, schools,...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The state Senate's top leader said Democrats in his house won't accept a key provision of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's massive public works plan - a limit on bond borrowing - because it could freeze out projects not sought by the governor. Schwarzenegger wants the Legislature to approve a constitutional amendment that would limit annual payments on bond debt to 6 percent of revenue coming into the state's largest budget account, the general fund. But Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, called the proposed debt limit "unworkable and unnecessary." "Circumstances change and governors and legislators need more...

I want to begin by applauding the administration for finally focusing the government’s attention on our long-neglected public works. I have often lamented the climacteric that befell our state in 1974 with the election of Gov. Jerry Brown and the introduction of a radical and retrograde ideology. He called it his “era of limits.” It was punctuated with such new age nonsense as the mantra “small is beautiful.” I think it can best be described as the naïve notion that if we stopped building things, people would stop coming. So we stopped building highways; we stopped building water projects; we...

Here is a breakdown of how money would be spent under the 10-year, $222.6 billion Strategic Growth Plan outlined Thursday in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's State of the State address: - Transportation and air quality programs, $107 billion. - School facilities, $48.2 billion. - Higher education facilities, $11.7 billion. - Food control and water supply programs, $35 billion. - Public safety facilities, $17.4 billion. - Courts and other public service facilities, $3.3 billion. Here are examples of what the money would buy or how it would be spent in each category, according to the governor's office: - Transportation: 1,300 miles of...

SACRAMENTO - After a year of sounding like former Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan and calling for new powers to cut spending, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has shifted gears. He's begun to sound a bit more like another former California governor, Democrat Pat Brown, who presided over an era when the state built freeways, water projects and universities. "I want to create an infrastructure — a huge infrastructure — that reduces the gridlock of our roads, builds the facilities that our cities and counties need, speeds up the movement of goods ... and delivers more energy and water and all the resources...

PALMDALE - The traffic situation from Antelope Valley to points south can be summed up in four words. "We have a crisis," said Victor Lindenheim, executive director of the Golden State Gateway Coalition. With 40% of America's imports leaving the Los Angeles/Long Beach ports in trains and trucks and commuters jockeying for position morning and night, L.A. County's Golden Transportation Triangle is a disaster. Lindenheim, who spoke to the Antelope Valley chapter of the Building Industry Association on Tuesday, projected a traffic increase of 65% in 10 years and 114% in 20 years. "If you have a spot on the...

<p>Three years ago, California voters approved Proposition 35, a constitutional amendment that allows the state to contract with private companies for public work projects.</p> <p>"The State of California and all other governmental entities... ," Proposition 35 states in part, "shall be allowed to contract out with private entities for architectural and engineering services for all public works of improvement."</p>

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.BREA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 6, 2003-- Executive Director Mark Pisano Outlines "Operation Jumpstart" -- A Public/Private Partnership Plan to Boost Economy Through Road and Rail Improvements. The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) outlined a $26.1 billion regional economic revitalization plan today that would accelerate a series of road and rail improvements to create thousands of high-paying jobs in the short-term and build the infrastructure necessary for Southern California to ultimately become the world's leading international trade center. Executive Director Mark Pisano unveiled the framework for SCAG's new "Operation Jumpstart" initiative during the...

<p>The awarding of lucrative contracts for public works projects in Hawai'i often appears to hinge directly on money that politicians demand for their election campaigns, according to a Honolulu architect who testified yesterday before an investigative grand jury probing city contracting and campaign donations to Mayor Jeremy Harris.</p>