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Comment by nsns | Hacker News Reader

But is it only BER? As mentioned int the article - what about Stuttgart 21 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21) etc.?

It is possible that these sites exist as new financial "loopholes", transferring tax-money from the government to private contractors without much oversight.

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> It is possible that these sites exist as new financial "loopholes", transferring tax-money from the government to private contractors without much oversight.

Yes, absolutely

http://www.zeit.de/2015/29/imtech-flughafen-berlin-ber-verzo... (article in German)

The complexity of that project is extremely high. My cousin is a civil engineer in Stuttgart, and he showed me a cross-sectional diagram of the affected area and the number of considerations seemed intractably high to me.

But more generally, these kinds of megaprojects go over budget in nearly every part of the world -- especially when tunneling is involved. Here in the United States, two examples are Boston's "Big Dig" and Seattle's viaduct replacement.

In the interests of being pedantic, and local pride: Seattle's viaduct replacement isn't over budget-- yet.

It's extremely likely to go over budget, but don't count the chickens before they've hatched. The last budget review came to the conclusion that it's still possible to finish the project as budgeted and scheduled.

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/seattle/2015/04/23/ber...

>The last budget review came to the conclusion that it's still possible to finish the project as budgeted and scheduled.

They should open a betting market on these types of lines. I'd love to see the fair odds. I'd take out a second mortgage if I could bet "This project will go over budget" if it was even odds.

On budget, perhaps. Maybe. On schedule? No. The report even says as much, page 4:

"The tunnel project will not achieve STP’s original completion date of December 2015."

Another example: Switzerland is building the AFAIK still world's longest train tunnel. It casually went from 8 billion estimated in 1992 to 24 billion and it's still not open.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Eisenbahn-Alpentransversa... (German)

It's a bit rarer for an airport to fail a fire inspection 4 weeks before planned opening and then sit empty for years and billions in fixes.

This one didn't go too bad. It even came in under the revised (increased) budget:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Tunnel_Project

But now they get to drain the great lakes faster for profit.

Montreal had a different sort of airport fiasco in the 1960s and 70s: Mirabel Airport was supposed to replace the Dorval Airport as the "Eastern Gateway to Canada" for human travellers.

Today, Mirabel is mostly a cargo airport. And the terminal is being demolished...

Meanwhile, Dorval was expanded several times. Also, it was renamed the Trudeau airport.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montr%C3%A9al%E2%80%93Mirabel_...

Looks like it's perfect time to stop expanding Dorval airport and concentrate on Mirabel future. Montreal area is growing, number of flights is growing. Important reason why Mirabel can't be used efficiently - is a lack of railway connection to it. If Mirabel were reachable by train there would be flights from it. And terminal wan't be demolished by the way, there is big push back for that.

According to news reports, the Mirabel terminal demolition began in November 2014: http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/mirabel-airports-...

Here in Australia we have found even more egregious ways of transferring money for failed transport infrastructure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_West_Link,_Melbourne

In summary: sign $5b contracts for a highly politicized white elephant just weeks before a scheduled election where the government will be booted out of office.

...and write into that contract compensation worth $100s of millions of dollars if a later goverment decides to cancel the project. Also, fail to release the unfavourable cost-benefit analysis.

Stuttgart 21 is mentioned in the article, as well as an unnamed concert hall in Hamburg.

The concert hall they refer to is the Elbphilharmonie which tripled its costs and construction time.

Costs for the tax payer are actually more than seven times (789M EUR) the original estimate at the time construction began (114M EUR in 2007). The initial estimate in 2005 was even lower, foreseeing costs of below 100M for the tax payer with donations supposed to cover the difference.

Thanks, somehow I had the wrong number remembered.

Probably this concert hall in Hamburg... terribly over-budget and late https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbe_Philharmonic_Hall

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