Vancouver makes 10 most wasteful transportation projects list

Dec 19 2017, 3:21 pm

Remember the dreaded NDP fast ferries? Well, they have now joined the ranks of some of the most ridiculous transportation projects in the world. The saving grace, if any, is that they didn’t cost as much as some of the other wasteful projects out there.

Top 10 wasteful transportation projects (according to Jalopnik)

  1. Argentine Space Shuttle Service: A project to offer commercial flights with space shuttles. Yep, sounds like a solid idea to us.
  2. The Dubai Metro: Just like everything else in Dubai, it cost more than it should, even with modern day slave labour.
  3. Spain’s No-Flights Airports: “Spain spent billions building and improving 24 airports. Demand (and money) dried up, dotting the country with ghost airports, and Spanish Civil Aviation reports that 15 of them operate just one commercial flight or fewer per day.”
  4. Montreal’s Airport That’s Larger Than Montreal: Designed for the Summer Olympics, however, soon after Montreal realized they’d built an airport that was 397 square kilometers in size, bigger than the entire city. It now sits empty for the most part.
  5. Alaska’s Bridge to nowhere: Would have been $338 million bridge to serve 50 residents. All that’s left is the above Road to Nowhere, leading up to the nonexistent bridge.
  6. Hawaii’s Haunted Highway: 1997 at a cost of $1.3 billion, or $80 million per mile. Native Hawaiin’s refuse to use it because they believe it’s cursed.
  7. Sydney’s Monorail: Cue The Simpsons “Monorail” tune. You could walk to your destination and still get to the same spot in the same amount of time. Plus you’d save $5.50. Monorail! Monorail! Monorail! Mono! D’oh.
  8. BC Ferries’ Fast Cat Fleet: “The cost of [the ferries] rocketed to CDN$460m from projected CDN$210m, it would have been far cheaper and better to buy in the Aussie Sea-cats, but due to Union pressure and Govt. gutlessness that wasnt possible.” In the end the ferries languished on the North Shore in various states of construction, until they were sold on years later for a mere CDN$19m.
  9. The Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line: Cost $11.2 billion, reduced traffic time by upwards of an hour. Original toll cost was $25 USD. And the people of Surrey are complaining about the tolls on the Port Mann Bridge.
  10. Boston’s “The Big Dig”: $20 billion over budget. No big deal.
DH Vancouver StaffDH Vancouver Staff

+ News
ADVERTISEMENT