Article misses the point that the cost and schedule overruns are really the whole point of the project. A project's nominal purpose -- train, tunnel, nuke plant -- is just there to fend off pressure to pull the plug. Sunk-cost fallacy keeps the money coming.<p>Solar and wind megaprojects seem to avoid this fate by a combination of easy accounting -- unit cost x total units = expected cost -- and incremental delivery -- they can start delivering power almost immediately, both demonstrating progress and helping fund further work. Those that fail to deliver early and on-budget are easier to cancel. (Cancelled big solar and wind projects are called failures, but are successes of project management; and equipment can often be sold on to other projects.)<p>For most big infrastructure projects, nobody really knows how much it <i>ought to</i> cost at each stage, or how far along it really is. The stakeholders who gave it the OK expect a piece of the action, continuously. They never want the money flow to cease, which would happen on completion.<p>America's innovation is that the corrupt money flows to stakeholders are <i>wholly legal</i>, with no risk of indictment. This makes it easier to start projects, even though harder to finish them. The people promoting the project can't afford to buy off gatekeepers, but the project budget itself can. The bigger it is, though, the more backers it will need, so it is easier to estimate low, and overrun.<p>Sometimes, if the money will be cut off anyway, it can be face-saving to deliver something at that point. Thus, Olkiluoto, Second Avenue, and Bay Bridge. NASA is required by law to buy a new, useless SLS every time they shoot one, but can delay launching pretty easily. The sooner SpaceX SuperHeavy starts launching cans, the sooner the obligation might be lifted. Expect to see a big new missile program approved immediately after that.<p>Thing is, most things somebody would like government to spend $billions on really shouldn't be built. So we need gatekeepers. And, some should be, so they need to be overcome sometimes.