Former governor Michael Dukakis has an interview with The Infrastructurist in which he says he understands why Amtrak isn’t getting that much money from President Obama’s stimulus bill (not enough “shovel-ready” projects on the railroad) but also voices impatience with the MBTA’s expansion schedule:

They’re talking about six years to extend the Green line from Lechmere through Somerville to Tufts on existing railway. Chinese and Irish immigrants were laying four miles of railway a day in 1867.

Dukakis also says that the quality of public construction management can spell the difference between a resounding success and a national laughingstock:

When I was governor, we had two big public works projects in Boston. One was the Harbor cleanup and one was the Big Dig. They were two of the biggest projects in history at the time. Both started out with same estimate – around $4 billion. One came in on time and 25 percent under budget. That was the Harbor cleanup. We all know what happened with the other one.

For more on the Big Dig management problems — will they be repeated in the infrastructure projects about to be funded by the federal government? — see the CommonWealth magazine feature “Learning from the Big Dig.” (Photo of repairs to the Longfellow Bridge by Joshi Radin.)