Jacob Wasserman, research project manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, spoke to the San Francisco Standard about the new Central Subway, the long-awaited transit project connecting eastern San Francisco to Union Square and Chinatown. Among major U.S. metropolitan areas, San Francisco has been one of the slowest to economically recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, raising questions about the current demand for ridership on the new subway. To date, the project is $375 million over budget. Wasserman said that time and cost estimates tend to be highly inaccurate from planning to opening for public transit projects. “Ridership projections are often much higher than ends up being the case, costs overrun by orders of magnitude.”