UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

Why the Worst Megaprojects Get Built
2006-10-17
Why the Worst Megaprojects Get Built and How Better Policy and Planning Can Stop It
Martin Wachs Lecture ||October 17, 2006 || UC Berkeley
Presented by: Bent Flyvbjerg, Aalborg University
The inaugural Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture was held on October 17, 2006 with Bent Flyvbjerg, professor of planning at Aalborg University, Denmark and a former Wachs doctoral student, told a packed auditorium of current and future transportation, urban and regional planners the bad news about megaprojects. The lecture discussed the tendency of these projects to go over budget, with nine out of 10 estimated to incur cost overruns. As the audience learned, demand for particular megaprojects are also significantly overestimated, while their budgets greatly exceed initial estimates, creating a costly, underutilized project. Flyvbjerg left the audience to consider how this overoptimism and overcomplexity should be addressed through policy.
