Clearing the Century’s Clutter
What makes the $2.5-billion Century Freeway project unique is not its fast lanes but its collateral social programs that so far promise more than they deliver.
So U.S. Appeals Judge Harry Pregerson, who oversees the results of 16 years of divisive litigation that binds the disparate freeway projects together, is calling in outside help to find out why that is the case. It is a necessary first step toward putting the project’s housing and hiring aspects back on track.
The social goals have not been reached because of bureaucracy, inexperience and sheer lack of good will. The goals for hiring minorities and women, as well as for contracting with minority- and female-owned companies, are unprecedented. But participation has been limited.
The outside specialists will come from the firms of Price Waterhouse and Hamilton, Rabinovitz and Alschuler. They will now start peeling away the layers of litigation and legal sniping to determine just what has gone wrong, looking for answers to such questions as: Why are so few minority and female contractors succeeding despite the broad targets? Why is so much of the housing behind schedule, over budget, poorly built and poorly located? Why have so many things gone wrong with the project when the price certainly seemed high enough to make them go right?
The affirmative-action goals are paper targets. Some contractors have created “front” companies that are minority-owned or female-run in name only, to take unfair advantage of the goals. Closer supervision can block cheating. Broader support for minorities and women who lack experience because they have been excluded from the system can help them overcome the barriers.
The housing program, designed to replace homes that stood in the path of the freeway, has produced hundreds of units that remained empty for months despite a regional scarcity of moderate-priced housing. It is certainly not impossible to build, at a reasonable cost, decent housing in areas where people want to live and in a mix of rental and sales units that meets the test of the market.
The grand scale of the Century Freeway provides a great opportunity for social progress as well as transportation progress. Judge Pregerson is proving, by his years of patience and persistence, that he cares deeply about the public-works project. His appointments can help to prevent the repetition of costly failures and past injustices. The independent experts should demand performance equal to the Century Freeway’s trailblazing goals.
