Megaprojects work only for the politicians

Oh, that’s weird. Ottawa just threw a bunch of money into a hole in the ground and went that was great, let’s add lots more.

No, no, “Ottawa” isn’t a stand-in here for “the federal government” in a cheap gag about government inefficiency. I’m talking specifically about the city of Ottawa’s Light Rail project. You may think boooring, local, and if Ottawa’s hurting har de har har you should see Fort Mcmurray. But take my train … please … because the problem it’s carrying is coming to you in some form wherever you live.

It all started because our politicians decided the city needed light rail because all the cool kids have it, not realizing Ottawa is not Toronto, let alone Paris. (Rule of thumb: if you’re not big enough for a circular line, you’re not big enough for a subway.) And if the issue were just political vainglory, it would still be worth worrying about far beyond Ottawa or even Canada. But it’s much worse.

See, this fiscal and infrastructure mess illustrates a structural problem explained in one of the most turgid books I ever enthused over by people whose names I can’t say: Megaprojects and Risk by Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius and Werner Rothengatter. I’ve mentioned it before in columns and a Breakout Educational Network video years ago (I think I just called the authors “FBR”). But as Samuel Johnson observed, we more often need to be reminded than informed.

Especially since last Wednesday, when CFRA radio said “The Confederation Line will not be ready March 31 … the third missed deadline” for a project originally due May 24, 2018. Now we’ll have it by June 30, unless we don’t. So on Thursday city council … held an inquiry? Balked? Heck no. It approved the even-more expensive Stage 2 ($4.66 billion vs $2.1 billion). And why not, having just been told Stage 2 would be as much as two years late and cost a billion dollars more than expected?

Hooray for us. We just threw more money into the hole. I mean, what are you going to do, stop with half a subway? After spending all that cash, tearing up roads and driving commuters mad? No. Once the train gets going, there’s no stopping it. Even if a real excuse, snow, delayed it.

I could go off-track here about how Ottawa is building light rail because we can’t get enough buses or cars into the downtown to cram more people in, which we have to because urban planners say we want to live cheek by jowl stacked into enormous highrises lining hostile tunnel-like streets. We just don’t know it. But the crucial point is yet another project over budget and overdue that, I predict fearlessly, will when finally finished carry a disappointing number of people for larger than forecast subsidies. At which point we’ll swallow hard and pay up because what are you going to do? Dig it up?

Here the train circles back to FBR station on its way to you. See, those unpronounceable authors found that megaprojects on several continents over nearly a century consistently cost more, took longer and delivered less than promised. So why haven’t we learned? Because, and now public choice theory chloroforms the last conscious audience member, we have. Unfortunately “we” are politicians and engineers.

The politicians have learned that they’ll get applause and votes for their starryeyed commitment to the city of the future, and once we’re in for $4 billion and it’s half built, they’ll be retired on fat defined-benefit pensions or will have moved to higher levels of government. And the engineers have learned that once we’re in for $4 billion and it’s half built, we’ll have no choice but to cut another cheque. And another. (Including, you’ll be happy to hear, a big one for SNCLavalin for Stage 2.)

Of course there are “penalties” built into the contracts. And I do mean “built in.” If you don’t think the firms negotiated room to save their own and the politicians’ faces with a payment that still left them a fat profit, you are not ready to go to the store alone. Especially not to buy trains.

I knew LRT would faceplant 10 years ago. I remember telling former mayor Larry O’brien an anecdote about wanting a train set as a kid but when my parents saw the price I didn’t get one. To his credit, he laughed. But nobody else on council or at city hall got it. And now people go, oh that’s weird, LRT’S way late and over budget, but it’s a oneoff, everything’s fine, let’s do it again. And it will happen in some form where you live, too, unless we wake up to why politicians hire engineers to dig big holes and throw money in.

It works. For them.