Congress began funding a transportation research center at South Carolina State University in 1998. Twenty-eight years later, most of the project is still in the design phase.
The university has already spent $11 million in federal funds, the bulk of it in 2013. It would be $15.8 million in today’s money.
That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2013 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth nearly $30 billion, including the immobile transit center.
Key facts: The university originally secured $24 million for a seven-building complex spanning nearly 200,000 square feet, which would research modern mass transit systems.
Issues began almost immediately, when contractors discovered that the university’s planned layout mistakenly called for the complex to be built on private property.
Later design documents were repeatedly rejected for errors and omissions. The school’s vice president of finance even told local media, “Everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong on this project.”
By 2013, the price had climbed to $107 million, and state auditors said the university had “no detailed, viable plan” to obtain the remaining money. The federal government (wisely) rescinded half of the federal funding once it was clear the project could be headed towards failure.
The university did complete a much smaller, 12,000-square-foot Transit Research Center. But the much larger transportation center never materialized.
In February 2026, South Carolina State said it had secured a $2.6 million state match for a new University Transportation Center facility and expected construction to begin sometime this year.
But in July, the university was still calling it the “long-awaited University Transportation Center” and said the project remained in the design phase. The university’s construction website now says work is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Summary: Coburn called the transportation center “stuck in neutral” back in 2013. Years later, its wheels still haven’t budged.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
