In five pages the largest public works project in history is examined in terms of its financing with a discussion of the Grant Anticipation Note along with other contingency and standard sources of funding. Thre sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: CC6_KSbigDigFinance.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
drastic bypass surgery performed on the heart of town. Its Central Artery, the elevated six-lane highway that runs through town, has been clogged for years. The highway opened in 1959
and was a marvel that had been planned for growth. It was designed to carry 75,000 vehicles daily, allowing more than enough room for growth of the city. Today, Bostons
Central Artery carries the distinction of being one of the most congested highways in the nation with its average of 190,000 vehicles a day. Projections for the future were
that the 10-hour daily traffic jam common in 1999 would increase to 16 hours by 2010. The project has been plagued by poor
planning, poor execution, scandal and finger-pointing. Cost overruns are measured in billions; the total cost of the project now stands at more than three times the original estimate.
The purpose here is to examine some of the financing decisions that have been made in recent years. Financing the Project As of
June 2000, the Big Dig project had placed over $11.2 billion under contract or agreement and 62 percent of all construction had been completed (Deloitte & Touche, 2000). No
current financial report contains much if any information related to original cost estimates, and reports of cost overruns rarely attribute any of the additional needed funds to undoing or redoing
work already finished and paid for, but later found to be inconsistent with the needs of the overall project (Pike, 2002). Project planning for the Big Dig was so
dismal in the early years that it is too sensational even for project management textbooks to address aside from using the Big Dig as an example of what not to