In my experience, the level of pride politicians show when initially announcing a project is a good indicator of how badly a project will go. The more politicia

In my experience, the level of pride politicians show when initially announcing a project is a good indicator of how badly a project will go. The more politicians are "excited" about it, the more they will try to micromanage it later (to death) and the more they will be OK with any shit from the contractors actually building it and the more OK they are with it going over budget. It's easier to pull one over on a politician who makes the final decisions, than a professional project manager with tons of experience. If it involves different political parties or governments (like BER, which had politicians from Berlin and from Brandenburg involved, both local and state, and the federal government too to some degree) then it gets even worse, a lot worse. So projects merely commissioned by politicians usually do better (go over budget because of the moronic public bidding process, but that's a different issue), while projects not just commissioned but overseen by politicians do far less well.