Cooking the transit books for fed-$s

“I have interviewed public officials, consultants and planners who have been involved in these transit planning cases, and I am absolutely convinced that the cost overruns and patronage overestimates were not the result of technical errors, honest mistakes or inadequate methods. In case after case planners, engineers and economists have told me that they had to ‘revise’ their forecasts many times because they failed to satisfy their superiors. The forecasts had to be ‘cooked’ in order to produce numbers which were dramatic enough to gain federal support for the projects.”

Martin Wachs “Ethics and Advocacy in Forecasting for Public Policy.” Business & Professional Ethics Journal 9 Spring 1990 p141.