How not to do it: mass transit. (several problems delay completion of Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's subway system)(American Survey)(Brief Article)

Economist (US), The, August, 1995

"OH JEEZ, what next?" cried an exasperated board member of Los Angeles County's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), when told recently that part of its $5.8 billion subway--the costliest public-works programme in America--had begun to crack. This was merely the latest in a long list of disasters.

Days earlier, the MTA's trouble-plagued Red Line caused a 70-foot sinkhole to appear in Hollywood Boulevard; the ground above the subway caved in as construction workers were reboring the line's twin tunnels to correct previous mistakes. Only days before that, building inspectors found completed sections of the Red Line to have walls much thinner than the stresses on them required. Meanwhile, the MTA faces $1 billion in law suits from angry property-owners along...

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