A small portion of my drive between my home and office is on Riverside Parkway. Riverside Parkway is 2-3 miles long and is currently being widened from 2 to 4 lanes. The project started in Spring 2005 (this post was near the beginning of the project) and was supposed to be finished in December 2006 (see here, scroll down to project number 30). The project is not yet complete, though this isn't surprising since most days I see no construction activity.

For comparison, consider a private construction project--Berry College's Cage Center. The Cage is a $32 million athletic and recreation center. Site prep started last summer and construction got underway in September. (A sequence of construction photos and a live cam are available here.) Construction is progressing rapidly and it is expected to be completed on or ahead of schedule in 2008.

As Bruce Herrick, one of my undergrad profs, used to say--for instance isn't proof. And although I think the road project should be less complicated and faster to complete, I could be wrong. Nonetheless, the pokey pace of construction on Riverside Parkway and the buzz of activity on the Cage strike me as a nifty illustration of government inefficiency vs. private sector efficiency.