Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. This week from our Archives episode number 323.

It's called, Here's Why All Your Projects Are Always Late and What To Do About It.

Hope you enjoy.

In 1968, just over 50 years ago, the governor of New York State Nelson Rockefeller

received a proposal he'd commissioned. It addressed the mass transit needs of the New

York City area. One center piece of the plan was a new subway line that would run

from Lower Manhattan up the east side and into the Bronx. It was called the Second

Avenue Subway. Four years later, Rockefeller and New York City Mayor John Lindsay held

a groundbreaking ceremony for the Second Avenue Subway, but not long afterward, the project

was shelved because of a fiscal crisis. Years later, a new governor, Mario Cuomo, tried

to restart it, but once again, the budget would not allow and back it went on the shelf. By

now, the Second Avenue Subway had become a punchline. New Yorker would promise to pay back

alone once the Second Avenue Subway was built. It came to be known as the most famous thing

that's never been built in New York City. But then, along came a man named Michael. Here,

I'm going to let him say it.

Michael O'Rodney-Chiano, if you look to see how people on Second Avenue would recognize

me as Dr. H. No one is really willing to pronounce my last name.

Okay, let's go with Dr. H. He is a longtime transportation scholar and executive. In 2008,

he became president of capital construction for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

And one of the first things he did was restart the Second Avenue Subway. By now, it was

40 years since Governor Rockefeller's original proposal. Dr. H updated the budgets and estimates

and finally got construction started. In 2010, a massive tunnel-boring machine began

...