For more than a year the news media have been reporting on the serious problems with the yet-to-be-opened, $120+ million Silver Spring Transit Center (3-inch pieces of concrete falling off, extensive cracking, total lack of expansion joints, thin slabs, exposed reinforcement, missing reinforcement, understrength and overstressed concrete, suspect concrete test reports, underdesigned beams, etc.). Not once in the hundreds of reports that I've seen have the news media asked these questions:
- Why are there serious flaws with the brand new, yet-to-be-opened, $120+ million Silver Spring Transit Center?
- Do the SSTC's serious, documented flaws suggest that there are other, perhaps even more serious problems with the SSTC that haven't been discovered yet?
- How can the brand new, yet-to-be-opened, $120+ million SSTC have all these documented problems before it even opens? The SSTC hasn't seen its first car, much less its first fully-loaded bus!
- Who was looking out for the public's interests (53% federal funding, 11% state, 36% county) during design and construction?
- What does the SSTC experiece say about the practice of using public-private partnerships to design and build public works projects?
Congratulations, news media. The BScubed/Hypocrisy award is yours!
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