[aplomb]

Our culture is incapable of building anything meaningful without extortion pricing.

[throwaway4891a]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

http://bensommer.com/blog/big-dig-big-corruption/

There's a mix of ineptitude, poor/non-planning and some shady deals. With larger projects, more waste is essentially inevitable because of the number of moving parts and limited communication paths.