If it involves different political parties or governments (like BER, which had politicians from Berlin and from Brandenburg involved, both local and state, and the federal government too to some degree) then it gets even worse, a lot worse.
So projects merely commissioned by politicians usually do better (go over budget because of the moronic public bidding process, but that's a different issue), while projects not just commissioned but overseen by politicians do far less well.
Of course, because the most of the press doesn't do it's job. Here is a more banal example about public bathrooms in New York: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfAE5emMCs8
>Berlin Brandenburg is an exceptional case
No, I wager is the rule.
Which you "proved" by carefully selecting a single anecdote?
I CAREFULLY SELECTED a single anecdote... did you miss the part where is detailed why toilets (as in more than one) and other government projects cost so much ant take such a long time to complete? What can I say, keep believing, comrade.
Maybe it's because publicly funded and managed projects have much greater scrutiny, and in many cases are required to respond to information requests. A private company is a black box and can use whatever means they please keep badly managed projects from becoming a story the press would be interested in.
Even the auditing firms are in on the game in the UK, so you really have no chance of knowing the truth until the bankruptcy is announced and the banks are lining up to get whatever assets are left.
> 1000s of projects that are on budget and on time
Ha, ha, ha, ha... Oh, you're serious :(
> A private company is a black box
That's why it's called a PRIVATE company. Is not your money, it's theirs, if they fuck up, they pay the consequences, it's simple.
Frankly, ReasonTV seems like a left-wing caricature of the libertarians. There's very likely a good case to be made of wastefulness, but that video didn't have it.
Disabled citizens are clearly better served by waiting for the oversized "Super Commission of Wheelchair Access" that takes three months to put a stamp on a project that has wheelchair access. You clearly didn't even understand the argument.
>And sustainability? Who needs that?!
Buzzword, three months, stamp.
>Frankly, ReasonTV seems like a left-wing caricature of the libertarians. There's very likely a good case to be made of wastefulness, but that video didn't have it.
I'm not at all surprised you think that.
There is no such commission, no such stamp. What there are, as the video says, is rules (and by the way, the guide shown is for visitors, nothing to do with construction). And yes, maybe disabled citizens are better off with those, because from what I can tell, the so-efficiently-renovated Bryant Park restroom has no wheelchair accessible stalls.
Again: is there waste? Absolutely, and it would have been nice to see some proper journalism covering it.
https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randweg_Eindhoven (Google translated: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...)
This is nonsense. It's just that infrastructure projects that get delivered on schedule and on budget (or somewhat close to that) don't make for equally pretty HN headlines.
There's a lot of public infrastructure around. The vast majority of it was commissioned by politicians. The vast majority of it is just there, mentioned a few times in the local rag before commission and upon opening and that's it.
Sure, I wouldn't be surprised if public spending is more often out of budget or behind schedule than private spending like you suggest. But even then, Berlin Brandenburg is an exceptional case and suggesting that excesses like it are inevitable when politicians were involved is just nuts. There's plenty of competent politicians.