Santa Monica Boulevard: We love it! (even if it's overbudget, behind schedule, & not forward-thinking!)

Why is the Santa Monica Boulevard Project through West L.A. $10 million over budget? That's above the budgeted $68 million. At the very least, they could have planned to have future mass transit/light rail down the center or the side. That is why there were two Santa Monica Boulevards to begin with - remember the Pacific Electric Railway?


This project had been discussed officially since the early nineties, and as of June 1998, it was scheduled to start in 2000 and be completed in 2002. Here we are in 2006, and the project is a year behind the official schedule that came out when the project commenced in 2003.

When construction is complete in 4 to 6 months, there's still a year of landscaping to be done. What I know is that the center median still hasn't been installed. Who's monitoring this project?

At least the "Smoking deaths this year & counting" sign will be there for eastbound drivers. Maybe during the construction, it should have been changed to "dollars overbudget & counting" or "days behind schedule & counting"?