The city manager for Norfolk, Virginia, has been forced to resign due to allegations that she knew about light rail cost overruns but failed to inform the city council. The senior vice president for development of Norfolk’s transit agency, Hampton Roads Transit, has also quit in response to allegations that her mismanagement led to the cost overruns.

When Flickr user DearEdward took this photo in July, 2008, Hampton Roads Transit was promising to start operating Norfolk’s light rail in December, 2009. Now it has postponed the opening to late in 2011.

They follow the transit agency’s previous general manager, who was forced to quit a year ago when the cost overruns first came to light. Meanwhile, Hampton Roads Transit has announced that the light-rail line is not only $106 million over budget, it is at least 16 months behind schedule. The most recent scheduled date for opening the line, May 2011, has been postponed indefinitely because of delays in delivering and installing safety equipment.

Norfolk wanted to use the light rail as the centerpiece for turning its downtown into a New Urban community “where people can work, shop, eat, and play.” That dream is also falling apart, as Farm Fresh, a major supermarket that opened downtown just three years ago, has announced that it is closing. Norfolk’s downtown now features “hundreds of empty condos, apartments, and storefronts.”

The officials who have been forced out of office complain that it is unfair that they were targeted for criticism, and perhaps it is. After all, nearly all light-rail lines go over their projected costs, yet officials and planners are rarely called to account for the overruns. Perhaps the Norfolk officials’ real failing was in failing to manage the media to make people think the project was successful no matter what the cost.

Consider, for example, Charlotte, North Carolina. Although Charlotte’s Lynx line is roughly comparable in length (9.6 miles) and cost ($460 million) to the lines in Minneapolis (12.3 miles; $715 million) and Houston (7.5 miles, $400 million), Charlotte’s carries only about a third as many riders as the other two. (Yes, the Lynx line is newer, but by their second full year’s of operation, the Minneapolis and Houston lines both carried far more passengers than Lynx in its second year.)

Despite its anemic ridership, Charlotte officials have convinced many that their line is a great success and that Charlotte should build more light-rail and commuter-rail lines. The transit agency is nearly broke, but it wants the city to double the fee to a consultant that is helping it “creatively finance” the new lines.