All civil engineering projects are failures until people forget what it cost to build them and just start taking the infrastructure for granted. Eleven people died constructing the Golden Gate Bridge, 96 for the Hoover dam, thousands for the Panama Canal. Do we remember them, or think that these projects were failures for killing people? No. We just think of how convenient they are.

I grew up contemporaneous with the Big Dig in Boston. People called that a massive failure too, even though it only killed one person instead of thousands. 15 years after completion, it’s a big success.