QUOTE : Congress also saw how Ronan and his contemporaries stretched the truth in order to obtain federal funding for their rail projects. In 1989, a US Department of Transportation researcher, Don Pickrell, meticulously compared project sponsors’ initial forecasts with the actual costs and benefits of projects after they were completed. Pickrell found that transit agencies grossly overestimated the number of passengers their proposed rail lines would carry. In fact, nearly all recently built projects were carrying less than half the number of forecasted riders. Likewise, nearly all the projects cost more than expected. Because of this, the 1991 federal transportation law that authorized about $800 million per year for large transit projects mandated a rigorous review process to evaluate the cost effectiveness of proposed projects.16