Development Hell / Real Life

aka: Transportation Infrastructure

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Automobiles & Tanks

• The Bradley Fighting Vehicle, development of which began in 1958, was not fielded until 1980. An initial attempt was rejected in 1965, it took until 1972 to get another design ready, and then four years later that design was merged with a program for a cavalry scout vehicle that induced yet more delays.
• Monica, a French luxury automobile brand, created 22 prototypes, of which 8 went into production before work was stopped indefinitely. Read more here. It was a sign of What Could Have Been.
• General Motors planned to turn Saturn into Opel of America, with more vehicles added to the product line, when the 2007-2009 global economic crisis struck. The name then disappeared as 2009 ended and 2010 started. The Saturn division itself was first announced and a prototype shown in 1983. It was 1991 by the time you could actually buy one, and the original sedan's wraparound rear window had been stolen internally by Oldsmobile, leading observers to see the Saturn as the "copy".
• Due in large part (but not entirely) to World War II, the VW Beetle design was finalized for production in 1938 but the first cars delivered to retail customers weren't until 1947.
• Mercedes-Benz T80 is a Stupid Jetpack Hitler example back in 1930s when aerodynamics were primitive. With an aircraft-like design and even an aircraft engine, the car boasts futuristic and aerodynamic performance which would not be seen for the next few decades. It was supposed to be run by Hans Stuck^note a famed racer of 1930s Grand Prix and Adolf Hitler's personal friend on a special stretch of the Autobahn, but the project was halted due to World War II. The bodyshell was saved, however, and there were never any run attempts afterwards. Many people over the decades have urged Mercedes-Benz to fully restore the T80 and test run it to see if it would have reached the ridiculously high speed record.

Aviation & Spaceflight

• The Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Rolled out in July 2007, the plans were for flights to begin in 2009, with stretched versions coming out within two to three years. Then, technical difficulties and parts delays meant the aircraft didn't make its first flight until December 2009. It wasn't until July 2011 that the 787-8 finally entered passenger service with All Nippon Airways. Then in December 2012, the aircrafts were grounded worldwide, due to problems with lithium-ion batteries catching fire on a few aircraft, including a Japan Airlines 787 at Logan International Airport and at least one pop-the-evacuation-slides emergency landing at Tokyo Haneda Airport by an ANA Dreamliner. Fortunately, once the problems with the base 787-8 model were resolved, production of the longer 787-9 was much faster, as it took its first flight in September 2013 and within a year, United Airlines, ANA and Air New Zealand had pressed their first -9s into regular service.
• The SpaceX Falcon Heavy. First announced in 2005, was supposed to have its first launch by around 2010, but has been delayed and re-announced so many times that it has gained a reputation for being perpetually 6 months away. The main problem is that it's basically three Falcon 9 rockets cobbled together, so every time the 9 is redesigned (once or twice a year), the Heavy also has to be redesigned, pushing back its completion by several more months. When or if it will actually make its debut remains to be seen.
  • Finally rescued in February 2018 with the test mission that made news by launching a Tesla Roadster to an orbit around the Sun. It has also flown a commercial mission, Arabsat-6A.
• The HAL Tejas, India's second attempt at an indigenously-designed combat aircraft, began development in 1981 under a requirement for a light fighter to replace India's fleet of license-built Mi G-21 fighters. The first planes were only put into service in 2015, 20 years after the Indian Air Force had to start retiring their Mi Gs. The primary culprit was India's insistence on all the aircraft's subsystems being fully indigenous, and unfortunately India's scientific and industrial resources were simply not up to the task. Development of the airframe and flight systems went reasonably smoothly, despite an 18-month delay after American sanctions, but the radar proved exceptionally difficult, forcing the Indians to buy Israeli radar systems as they worked out the bugs, and the Kaveri engine was a complete failure, being decoupled from the Tejas program and forcing the Indians to settle for American engines. Add on an extremely long testing regime, and the result was a plane that might have been reasonable if delivered on time, but when actually delivered was obsolescent and forced the Indian Air Force to pay for newer, modified variants if they wanted a suitable airplane.

Buildings

• The Basílica de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain, broke ground in 1882 and was only 15-25% complete when its architect Antonio Gaudi died in 1926. Further delays were caused by the Spanish Civil War, fire damage, and the loss of the original plans. It was last expected to be completed in 2026, but was pushed back yet again due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, a 105-story hotel that first broke ground in 1987. Economic recession brought on by the collapse of the USSR, North Korea's biggest benefactor, however forced the project on hold, and the massive structure stood at full height unused and without any interior fixtures whatsoever from 1992 until 2008. The North Korea government hoped to have the structure ready for occupancy in time for the birthday of the late Kim Il-Sung in 2012, by which point the building's exterior had finally been finished only for construction to be halted yet again. The government tried again to have it ready for 2013, only for that to be cancelled too for political reasons. As of 2020, the building remains unoccupied, and no new date for its final completion has been announced.
• The Broadway, a shopping mall in Bradford, UK. Originally planned in 1998 to spruce up the city's fairly unpleasant shopping area, it finally got approval in 2003. Buildings in the area were completely demolished by 2006 and dug out. A number of shops closed up to prepare to move into the new building. After Westfield decided to focus on other projects the city was left with an enormous demolished pit (referred to locally as 'The Hole') until 2010 when a small section of the site was turned into a park. As a result an entire chunk of the city was basically abandoned, with nearby shops closing up due to lack of people visiting the area. Construction finally got underway in 2014, and it finally opened in November 2015.
• The Oakland Athletics have been trying get a new home at least since the 1996 renovations to the Coliseum to bring the NFL's Raiders back turned one of the most picturesque stadiums into one of the ugliest. A plan to build a ballpark for them in San Jose has stalled since its announcement in 2009; as of 2013, a new plan to keep the team in Oakland's city limits with a waterfront ballpark near Jack London Square has emerged. That plan stalled as well, and the Raiders have now given up on the Bay Area and moved to Las Vegas in 2020.
  • Across the bay, the San Francisco 49ers announced plans in 1997 to build a new 68,000 seat football-only stadium adjacent to their home Candlestick Park, which they shared with the San Francisco Giants at the time. That November, voters approved a $100 million bond to help pay for it. But the plans for project, which would also have featured additional entertainment venues and housing, got caught up in a financial quagmire, with the amount of money the team would've needed to provide the infrastructure and parking being as much, if not more, than what the stadium itself would've cost. There was also concern over public money being used on the project. By 2006, with the Giants now gone and the 49ers as the sole Candlestick tenant the talk was shifting to a joint partnership with the city, and the new stadium as the centerpiece of a prospective bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Frustrated with the lack of progress, toward the end of 2006, the 49ers ownership finally announced they were giving up on getting a stadium built in San Francisco, and would instead build it in Santa Clara (an hour's drive from San Francisco), where the team's headquarters are, killing the project for good (and leading to the withdrawal of the Olympic bid). The 49ers left in 2014, and the existing stadium was demolished the next year.^note The final event was a Paul McCartney concert, a nice nod to Candlestick having been the site of the final concert of The Beatles in 1966.
• The NFL's Rams and Raiders both moved out of L.A. in 1994, citing the lack of a modern stadium as a major factor. Various groups had been trying to get a plan approved ever since, but neither plan managed to win both the needed city council approval and necessary financial backing. Despite several deadline extensions from the NFL, this lack of a concrete plan caused the league to bypass them for an expansion team in 2000, awarding it to fellow ex-NFL city, Houston. The fact that neither the city nor investors would commit to such an expensive project without a definite occupant and no NFL team was willing to make the move without a stadium plan in place had meant two decades (and counting) without the NFL in Los Angeles. Then, in 2016, following a disastrous tenure with their then-venue in St. Louis, the Rams decided to return to L.A.
• The Ballpark Village shopping/entertainment/apartment complex in downtown St. Louis, designed to revitalize the area. Building began in 2005 with a planned completion date of July 2009. Around 2008, building stopped as financier Bill DeWitt refused to spend any more money on the project (and he is a multi-billionaire who makes a lot of money off of the St. Louis Cardinals, so his penny-pinching is completely inexcusable). It's finally completing its first stage of development (which includes Wrigley-like "rooftops") by the time the 2014 season starts.
• When the Texas Rangers' new Ballpark in Arlington opened in 1994, it was supposed to be part of an expanded entertainment district that included, of all things, an amphitheater just to the northwest of the park. When Tom Hicks bought the club four years later, he promised an entire "Rangers Village" of condos and restaurants surrounding the area. As of 2014, the hill that was to contain the amphitheater has been paved down for a parking lot, the first set of condos built further to the northwest remain only half completed (largely due to Hicks declaring bankruptcy, which forced him to sell the team in 2010), most of the restaurants that have opened over the time closed down in just a couple years (including the one built into the ballpark), and many homes to the southwest were seized and torn down by the city to build the new Cowboys stadium. And then in 2016, the team and city went and built a whole new roofed stadium that the club moved into after 2019 to quell the grumbling among some fans and media about the current park not having a roof to counter the extreme North Texas heat (despite the Rangers' pennants in 2010-11 and drawing 3 million attendance in 2012 and 2013 negating the argument that the heat prevents the team from winning and drawing fans); the old ballpark for now remains open, having been converted to host a minor league soccer team and the area's XFL franchise.
• Cologne Cathedral in Germany had the same development hell treatment during the time it was constructed. Construction started in 1248, halted in 1473, resumed in 1842, and was finally completed in 1880. This is fairly common in medieval churches and cathedrals. The grander ones, even in the best case scenario, couldn't be completed in one generation. Under less than ideal conditions, many had construction that dragged on for decades or centuries as they repeatedly ran out of money and had to raise more. As a result, different sections are built according to the architectural styles of different eras, or are asymmetrical because they couldn't afford to build something again on the other side.
  • Ironically today there is (again) construction going on as acid rain and the sheer ages of some parts of the building have left their marks. A saying in Cologne allegedly goes "Wenn der Dom fertig ist geht die Welt unter" (once the cathedral is finally done, the End of the World as We Know It happens)
• The Milan Cathedral began its construction in 1386 and its final touches were done in 1965.
• The Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City is one of the largest churches in the world, and has never been finished since construction started in 1892.
• Scientology's Flag Building, a.k.a. the "Super Power Building", in Clearwater, Florida, which was announced in 1993, broke ground in 1998, and subsequently put off its completion date for eleven years. And even after the building supposedly became ready for occupancy in 2010, it sat empty for another three years. Then, after the grand opening was scheduled for October 2013, Scientology announced in mid-September that the event would be held up "indefinitely" over a dispute with the city over permits for the ceremony. The building finally opened on November 17, 2013.
• The Mall at Oyster Bay was first planned to open in 1997 in Syosset, New York. The land was finally sold in 2014.
• Great Mall of Las Vegas in, well, Las Vegas. Proposed in the 2000s as an outdoor mall featuring Macy's, Dillard's, a movie theater and condominiums. The property went into default in 2009.
• Shops at East Prairie in Ames, Iowa. Proposed in 2002, canceled in 2011 when the land was sold.
• A small outdoor mall in suburban Flint, Michigan called Trillium Circle was first proposed in 2004. Things first hit the skids when an existing grocery store decided to close instead of relocate into the mall. A theater opened on the site in 2006, but the economic decline and poor anchor choices (it would've had a Circuit City, but they went out of business) ground development to a halt, with only a Buffalo Wild Wings and a bank being built on outparcels. The developers have since sold off the land.
• Bridges at Mint Hill, a proposed mall in Mint Hill, North Carolina. Originally slated for a 2007 opening, it quickly became a Troubled Production due to many factors — declining economy, protection of an endangered species of mussel, and the bankruptcy of the developer (General Growth Properties). Another developer finally bought the property in 2012 and revived the plans, but nothing else has been done since.
• Glacier Town Center in Kalispell, Montana (which would consist of both a mall and a planned community) was first proposed in 2002. The developers were given a one-year extension in 2010, but since then, nothing has happened.
• And going the other way, the Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois closed in 1978. A portion was briefly used as temporary school space, and one wing was fitted with fake storefronts for the famous "car chase through the mall" scene in The Blues Brothers, but the structure just sat unused otherwise, at the mercy of vandals and weather. The first redevelopment plans were announced in 1997, but redevelopment of the long-vacant building did not begin until 2005, when it was announced that a kitchen supply company wanted to open in one of the former anchor stores. The plans were later changed to demolish the building for a new retail center, but all development was halted when it was realized that the mall was loaded with asbestos, and the company that started demolition did not have a permit (that particular store that would have housed the kitchen supply store, a former Montgomery Ward, was essentially damaged beyond repair when the company illegally — due to the asbestos problem not being solved — tore down the central power plant on Christmas Eve before the mayor saw it and stopped them). Another company announced plans to build a new retail center on the site in 2010, but nothing happened until mid-2012, when the land was finally cleared.
• American Dream Meadowlands, originally Xanadu Meadowlands, was designed as not just a mall, but a full lifestyle center complete with an indoor ski slope, ice rink, amusement park, live theater, and other attractions. It has been in development since 2003. The opening of the mall, located near the former Giants Stadium and its replacement of MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, has been pushed back several times due to various companies going bankrupt (two companies behind the construction of the mall, plus Borders, Virgin Megastore, Circuit City, and Sports Authority, which were all originally slated as anchor stores) and stores pulling out because of the delays. It also didn't help that the mall was originally, as New Jersey's former Acting Governor Richard Codey said, "yucky looking." American Dream has been at least 80 percent complete since 2009, when it was also 70 percent leased. In 2011, the indoor ski slope collapsed under record breaking snowfall, delaying the opening of the mall even further and further. Finally after a seemingly interminable back-and-forth, it achieved completion and was given an opening date in October 2019... only for the stores to be delayed until March 2020, just in time for COVID-19 to lock everything down.
• Lockport Mall in suburban Buffalo, NY was slated to be demolished and replaced with a Walmart since 2007. While the mall was successfully torn down (except for The Bon-Ton department store, which stayed until going out of business in 2018), the Walmart construction was repeatedly held back due to seagulls nesting on the site. The Walmart finally opened in 2015.
• Renovations for Madison Square Garden were set to get underway in 2010, but it was pushed back a year, with the renovation taking place in three stages over the summers of 2011, 2012, and 2013. To stall for even more time, the New York Rangers were sent on an extended road trip, after which they were finally welcomed home at the end of October.
• The Sydney Opera House, which was built between 1959 and 1973. It ended up 10 years behind schedule and 14 times over budget, due to the complexity of the architecture and manufacture of the steel beams. On top of that, the architect, Jorn Utzon, quit in disgust.
• The Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was begun as the central venue for the 1976 Summer Olympics. It was finally completed in 1987 with the installation of the retractable roof (which had remained in storage in France until 1982). At this point, it was discovered that the roof was not correctly designed and tore easily in use. It was removed in early 1998, and in the later part of the year replaced with a different, fixed roof... which failed dramatically during the first winter, causing the annual auto show that was being set up at the time to permanently change venues. In 2004, a contract was awarded for a new, permanent steel roof. In September of that same year, the stadium lost its biggest tenant when the Montreal Expos baseball team (which had already been splitting time between Montreal and San Juan, Puerto Rico for home games for two years) moved to Washington D.C. In 2009, the local fire department warned that without substantial repairs, including a new roof (still not installed) the stadium might be ordered closed. In 2011, approval for the new roof contract was sought.
• The second El Rancho Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas originally opened in 1948 as the Thunderbird and closed for good in 1992. For almost a decade the marquee advertised a future Countryland USA casino (with hotel towers shaped like cowboy boots), though by the mid-90's that project had fallen through along with a sci-fi themed "Starship Orion" resort as the property changed hands numerous times. An investigation by the local NBC station in 1999 found most of the building's interior had rotted away, though a small portion had been maintained in pristine condition (including working slot machines) as an attempt to attract a buyer. The state of Nevada finally ordered the property sold in 2000, and it was bought by a condominium company. The decrepit building was imploded later that year and, while part of the land was used for a neighboring casino project, the majority of the land remains vacant to this day.
• The rebuilt World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan of New York City. Years after the events of 9/11/2001, the 16-acre site formerly known as "Ground Zero" remained depressingly empty. Plans for a new World Trade Center complex were approved in 2003, scheduled to finish by the 10th anniversary; a cornerstone was laid in 2004... and all work halted until late 2006 while financial and architectural lawsuits raged.
  • One World Trade Center proceeded with construction in late 2006 with foundation work to street level over one and a half years. It began rising above street level in early 2008, and finally finished development for tenancy in 2014.
  • Two World Trade Center has had assembly to street level occur from 2010 to 2013, but is currently on hold until a major company signs a deal to occupy the skyscraper. Since that time, News Corp and 21st Century Fox pulled out of a non-binding agreement to occupy the building, and Deutsche Bank later considered a move to the building but ultimately decided against it.
  • Three World Trade Center had underground foundation work manufactured to street level from 2010 to 2013, but only had its concrete core (including its perimeter steel structure) topped out at maximum height in 2016. It finally opened in June 2018.
  • Four World Trade Center began construction in 2008 with foundation work. It was built to street level in 2009 and fully constructed and opened 4 years later on November 13, 2013.
  • Five World Trade Center, which occupies the site that was formerly the Deutsche Bank Building, is on stand-by until a potential building developer and work tenants for occupancy are set.
  • A proposed Performing Arts Center, which may or may not be called “Six World Trade Center” sometime in the future, could not start construction until early 2016, due to the temporary exit from the PATH station still existing on-site. A permanent exit was finally built, allowing the temporary exit to be demolished. The building, now with a redesigned layout, is currently planned to be completed sometime between 2020 and 2022.
  • Seven World Trade Center is the only building to not fall victim to this trope as it is independent from the main site. Having a smaller footprint than the original red granite facade structure, the building’s construction proceeded on May 7, 2002 and achieved completion on May 23, 2006 (just a few weeks more than 4 years).
• The Cityplace Center in Dallas was initially going to be twin towers on either side of Central Expressway with a skybridge in between. However, the real estate market crash of the late 1980s torpedoed plans for the second building (along with many majestically-planned skyscrapers in Dallas). The result is the building's dedication plaque reading "Cityplace Center East" with no counterpart on the west side of the freeway. The land initially allocated for the West tower is now used as an entrance to the Cityplace underground DART station (the only underground station in the system) and a turntable terminal for the McKinney Avenue heritage streetcar line.
• The Elbe Philharmonic Hall in Hamburg, Germany was in construction since 2007, and was supposed to be finished in 2010, and finally did open in early November 2016^note Yes, Germans also made jokes about 2016 being the year when the impossible finally happened. Needless to say, the costs exploded too. Since its construction is to a great part financed by tax money, the citizens of Hamburg are quite understandably a little bit angry concerning this whole affair...
• If you live in the Greater Orlando region of central Florida, you're well aware of the Majesty building in Altamonte Springs, or its more infamous nickname, "the I-4 Eyesore". While it's clear that progress has been made and will eventually be finished, it's a matter of what year. It's been under construction since 2001 and is owned by a local Christian television station. However, due to whatever funding reasons (largely donations), it's been labeled by its owners as a "pay-as-you-go" project, and made the news again for using memorial pavers to cover leaks.
• The new airport supposed to be built in Berlin has been this due to politics and more. Originally planned to open in 2007, delays began almost immediately when lawsuits tried to stop the airport before the construction had begun. Construction finally was started in September 2006. A few weeks before a scheduled opening date it turned out that the fire protection systems were not up to any standards, not even to those for holding an opening ceremony, let alone running an airport. From there it went downhill.^note  this video gives a good overview Technical and other difficulties prevented several opening dates that were announced, with a scheduled opening in the 2nd half of 2016 ultimately announced. Several later reports mentioned a more probable opening date of 2018—a date that was still viewed with serious doubts by many. The skeptics were proved right; as of January 2019, the official opening date has moved to autumn 2020, and by some reports the actual opening may not be until 2021. Part of the airport went on-line in May of 2015, but that was only as a substitute landing strip so that the airport Schönefeld—which is to be one of several airports to be replaced by the new airport—could repair one of its strips. Meanwhile Tegel airport, which is supposed to be shut down once the new airport opens is handling much more traffic than it was originally designed for and shows signs of its age, but a renovation is not in sight, because a replacement will "soon" happen. Finally the airport opened on 31 October 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Landmark Mall in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, was built in The '60s as an outdoor mall, but revamped in The '90s as a massive three-level indoor mall. While initially successful, it started to lose stores in the late 90s-early 2000s, starting with the central department store Woodward & Lothrop. That chain went out of business, and the location later became a very short-lived J. C. Penney, and then an even shorter-lived Lord & Taylor. Upscale developments and nearby existing malls such as Tyson's Corner and Pentagon City began leeching away the interior tenants. Then-owner General Growth Properties announced plans to tear down the mall and revert it back to an outdoor center in the mid-2000s, but these plans were halted by the economic downturn at the time, along with General Growth's filing for bankruptcy. After the center passed to new owners, the city of Alexandria approved demolition for 2014... then 2015... then 2016, with nothing happening other than the huge mall becoming increasingly vacant. It finally closed except for a Sears store at the end of January 2017. The Sears store hung on until mid-2020, and by the end of that year the mall was announced as the site of a new mixed-use development anchored by a new hospital. The entire mall, except for the parking garage, was demolished in 2022.
• Elk Grove Promenade in Elk Grove, California, a southern suburb of Sacramento. It was first proposed in the mid-2000s as an outdoor mall featuring traditional mall stores, but after the outer frames of the buildings went up, the Great Recession halted plans (while also killing off local department store Gottschalks, which would have had a location there). The center has sat vacant ever since in attempts to get it restarted, but plans were finally announced in 2016 to use the skeleton to build an outlet mall. The center, known as Outlet Collection at Elk Grove, was originally supposed to open in fall 2018, but this too was cancelled and the development demolished in 2019.
• Pinnacle Nord du Lac was a planned outdoor mall in Covington, Louisiana. Construction started in 2010. A cluster of restaurants had been built, along with Kohl's, Hobby Lobby, and a sporting goods store. Several other retailers were committed to the project, including Dillard's and Barnes & Noble, and a new freeway exit off Interstate 12 was built to service the facility... but the economic downturn of The New '10s put the project on ice, leaving the "lifestyle" center of the project half built and untenanted. It sat for over seven years in a partially finished state before new developers finally acquired the project in late 2017 and announced plans to finish it.
• In the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, construction began on an outdoor mall called Bloomfield Park, but was halted in 2008 due to the recession. The half-finished buildings sat vacant until spring 2017, when demolition began on all but a parking deck. By 2019, the site was finally redeveloped into a small shopping center with a Menards home improvement store.
• Even within the proud French tradition of overblowing budgets and timetables in BTP (Buildings and Transportation for the Public), special credit must go to the project of the European Pressurised Reactor, also known as the EPR project of which the flagship is currently being built in Flamanville County, département of the Manche in Northwestern France near Cherbourg . The project has begun in the late nineties in the laboratories of the national electrical power supplier, EDF, and the first bit of concrete at Flamanville was poured on December 6th 2007, but from then on the costs and the delay have ballooned up : at first it was supposed to open in June 2011 but in August 2010, it was postponed to 2014, then in July 2011 it was postponed to an unspecified date in 2016, then in November 2014, it was postponed again to an unspecified date in 2017, then in September 2015, it was postponed to the fourth quarter of 2018, and finally in July 2018 according to the latest data its opening has been postponed to late 2019, without much more precision ... If by that point it feels like an overly long gag, wait until you hear the costs! The EPR project began with a budget of around 3,3 Billion euros but as of now, early September 2018, the budget stands at 10,9 Billion euros and counting ... So much so that it is widely considered that it is useless at this point to hope for a grand opening next year.
• "Tourist" hotel in Novosibirsk - started as a grand project in 1968, steadily built for a decade or so, and then abandoned because of several administrative srew-ups. Its see-through skeleton rises over one of the squares, being too expensive to finish, sitting on the too expensive patch of land to be bought and replaced with something else, and made with enough quality not to fold into itself despite being exposed to elements for half a century. In 2018 there a project to reconstruct it has allegely started, but if it'll make to finish remains to be seen.
• Several decades earlier, in the 1980s, in another Detroit suburb, Auburn Hills, Taubman Centers purchased agricultural land at Interstate 75 and Baldwin Road that was zoned for residential use^note in fact, at the time, the only businesses at the interchange were three gas stations and McDonald's and Big Boy restaurants and sat on the site for a while before selling it to the Western Development Corporation^note the predecessor of the Mills Corporation in 1989 after Western Development expressed interest in building a mall, which was named Auburn Mills, and was, as typical for other Mills-named malls^note of which, at the time, only Virginia's Potomac Mills and Philadelphia's Franklin Mills were already open; while two others, Florida's Sawgrass Mills and Illinois' Gurnee Mills, were then under construction, to be a large indoor mall comprising both traditional mall tenants and outlet stores. Auburn Mills was to have featured 230 inline stores, and among the proposed anchors were the first Michigan locations of Bed Bath & Beyond and the now-defunct Waccamaw Pottery. Despite state environmental approval, lawsuits were filed by the neighboring city of Lake Angelus over traffic and environmental issues, though in August 1990, a judge ruled in favor of Western Development, who then announced that the mall would be opening in late 1992. However, a foreclosure threat delayed the mall's construction until early 1991 — just in time for a recession to kill the project, and the land was sold again, this time to the Union Bank of Switzerland.^note Despite Auburn Mills' cancellation, Kmart opened a prototype store across Joslyn Road in 1992 and the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) reconfigured I-75's interchange with Baldwin in 1994. Fast forward to June 1996, and Taubman repurchases the property and announces their own indoor outlet mall plans for the site, with a smaller 185-store footprint to lessen the environmental impact. Taubman's mall, which was named Great Lakes Crossing^note later renamed in September 2010 to Great Lakes Crossing Outlets in 1997, finally opened on November 12, 1998.
• Within the city of Detroit itself, the Perfecting Church broke ground in 2000, and the building began taking shape in 2003... and it's still incomplete. Financial problems played just one role in its prolonged construction.
• Cottonwood Mall in the Salt Lake City suburb of Holladay was Utah's first shopping mall, built in 1962. As the surrounding area became more developed, businesses began leaving the mall for nearby locations with lower overhead costs, and by the 2000s it had a 25% vacancy rate. A real estate company bought it in 2007 and announced a grandiose plan to redevelop the site into a mixed-used combination of retail and housing. The first phase was to demolish the entire mall except for one anchor store, Macy's. This led to the bizarre visual of the store standing by itself on a vacant lot surrounded by debris, clearly having once been attached to a larger building. Then the company went bankrupt in 2009, halting plans. Since then a number of new plans have been drawn up, but never came close to actually getting built. Frustrated, Macy's finally closed its store in 2017, leaving the sole building vacant. One plan was scuttled after local residents protested a massive rezoning of the area. A new plan (called Holladay Hills) approved in early 2020 got delayed by the COVID-19 Pandemic, and a later revised date of Fall 2022 for the project completion was way too optimistic.

Transportation Infrastructure

Transportation infrastructure is a very complicated business from an engineering standpoint, and also from an economics standpoint (since nobody can ever agree on the most likely economic impact of the new infrastructure) and from a political standpoint (since inevitably these things get people nearby riled up for or against them, with the pro-side usually saying something like "Jobs!" and the anti-side usually saying "Too Expensive!" and "Noise and Smell!"^note Also, if it's a public transportation project, the pro-side will usually say "Opportunity for the Poor!" and "Green!", and the anti-side will usually say "Crime!" and "Keep Our Neighborhood Exclus—sorry, Nice!"). As a result, infrastructure projects tend to get hit with this trope very easily.

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• U.S. Route 31 has slowly been in the process of conversion to freeway from South Bend, Indiana to just east of Benton Harbor, Michigan. A leg on the west side of Niles, Michigan was opened in 1992 as a divided highway without exits but later upgraded. The next-to-last stretch was completed in 2003, but halted just a couple miles shy of an obvious hookup into the existing I-94/I-196 exit, due to a creek in the freeway's path being the habitat for a rare species of butterfly. Construction on the final leg finally began in 2021, instead following a path that curves more to the west, that leg would open in 2022. Further north, there have also been plans to bypass Holland and Grand Haven to the east with an additional freeway routing, both to fill in the last gap between the state line and Ludington and to bypass a drawbridge in Grand Haven. However, the only stretch to be completed was M-231, a two-lane eastern bypass of Grand Haven built in 2015.
• The attempts to have a complete commuter rail system in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas have been hampered with multiple delays, which can't be completely surprising since the two major cities have separate transit authorities; it now looks like it was a major miracle that the Trinity Railway Express connecting the two was even completed at all, let alone back in 2001. DART's Orange light rail line was originally supposed to be complete by December 2012; while most of it is operational, the final extension to DFW Airport was pushed back until 2014 (but was finished two months ahead of the new December '14 target date). The Cotton Belt corridor line connecting the airport to the northern suburbs now has a proposed implementation date of 2025 at the earliest. Meanwhile, The TEX commuter rail line to run through Fort Worth originally had a proposed completion date of 2012. It's currently been pushed all the way to late 2018 - and that's just for the first half that will connect downtown to Grapevine and DFW Airport; the southern end running to the medical district and TCU has been put off indefinitely.
  • Another hurdle the cities have had to overcome is Arlington, which is believed to have long been the largest city in America with no public transit and whose citizens constantly vote down any transit plan. This is a huge problem for the Metroplex since Arlington sits in the middle and is one of the area's biggest tourist destinations, now being the home to the Dallas Cowboys in addition to the Texas Rangers baseball team and the Six Flags Over Texas theme park. In 2013, the city agreed to a bus line connecting downtown Arlington and its entertainment district to the nearest Trinity Railway stop, only to discontinue the service in 2017 in favor of a city-sponsored rideshare service... that doesn't operate after 9 pm or on weekends at all and has since been restricted from operating in certain parts of the city at all due to complaints from family groups that don't want the service running in their neighborhoods(these same groups have passed similar bylaws prohibiting Air Bn B rentals in these neighborhoods).
  • Another example in the Metroplex, State Highway 360. South of Interstate 20, the main road ends and the highway continues as frontage roads, complete with dummy entrance and exit ramps, continues until the Ellis County line at US Highway 287. Subsequent plans have included possibly making it a tollroad in order to finish completion, with the latest proposal up in the air as of 2013.
• Sydney's second airport. Everyone agrees that the city badly needs one (since at least the 1980s, possibly earlier), but nobody's been able to find a good place for it, and the huge amount of costs would mean that the city might not even have one by 2020. (As of 2014, they've finally found a spot in Badgerys Creek.)
  • The North-West Rail Link, Epping to Cherrybrook to Congegong Road has been wanted since the 80's and is now being built, but will be finished by 2023.
• There were several grandiose plans in the past to expand the New York City Subway to areas that do not have subway service, notably Staten Island, eastern Bronx and eastern Queens. Though discussion remains strong to develop some of these lines to alleviate existing subway constraints and overcrowding (and provisions were built for future expansion), they never went past the drawing board for various reasons. Aside from the infamous 2nd Avenue Line (which was on the planning board since the 1920s before being finally open for service in 2017), some of these proposals included:
  • Extensions of the Astoria, Fulton Steet, Flatbush, Archer Avenue, Crosstown, Broadway, 6th Avenue, Concourse and Flushing Lines.
  • New subway lines:
    • Under Utica Avenue in Brooklyn to Mill Basin (either from via Worth Street or from Crown Heights via the Eastern Parkway Line's express tracks).
    • Under Worth Street in Manhattan to the Rockaways (where it would connect the proposed Utica Avenue Line at South Fourth Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with the 8th Avenue Line's local tracks south of Canal Street).
    • Under Fresh Pond Road to Maspeth (where it would connect with the Myrtle Avenue Line and provide direct service to the Rockaways via the LIRR's disused Rockaway Branch; the Rockaways are now connected to the subway via the Fulton Street Line).
    • Under Lafayette Avenue to Throggs Neck (in the Bronx).
    • Under Boston Post Road to Co-op City (also in the Bronx - would either be an extension of the Concourse Line, a spur of the 2nd Avenue Line or a combination of the two).
    • Under 149th Street and 11th Avenue to College Point (in Queens as a spur of the Flushing Line, which would have been extended to Bayside).
    • Using the LIRR's freight-only Bay Ridge Branch for thru service between the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and possibly Staten Island.
  • There were proposals to extend the subway to New Jersey. One proposal in the 1930s recommended using the George Washington Bridge's lower level to Fort Lee, while another suggested an expansion of the Flushing Line south of 34th Street to Secaucus Junction via Hoboken.
  • While the JFK and Newark airports have direct rail connections, LaGuardia lacks one. Earlier proposals to extend the Astoria Line from Ditmars Boulevard were kiboshed due to a lack of interest.
  • The Rockaways get special mention here: a proposal in 1929 had the LIRR's Rockaway Branch be connected from the Myrtle Avenue Line (via the 8th Avenue Line's Worth Street spur), while another in 1939 had it connect with both the Fulton Street and Queens Boulevard Lines (as bellmouths were built east of 63rd Drive-Rego Park for the proposed connection to the Rockaway Branch). It wasn't until 1956 that the Rockaways were finally connected to the subway via Fulton Street, while the section between Rego Park and Ozone Park remains under the city's domain. To this day, discussion remains strong to reactivate the abandoned right-of-way for passenger service.
  • The Queens Boulevard Line is another case: While its construction stimulated the development of central Queens, there are multiple provisions along the route that were never built:
    • The spur to the Rockaways east of 63rd Drive-Rego Park via the LIRR's Rockaway Branch.
    • Another spur to either Glendale or Maspeth from Jackson Heights.
    • Another spur east of Briarwood along the Van Wyck Expressway to South Ozone Park (which was later used for the Archer Avenue Line to Jamaica Center - and it too was to be extended towards southeast Queens).
    • An extension of the line beyond 179th Street to Bellerose.
    • Another spur east of Woodhaven Boulevard to Bayside via the Long Island Expressway (the Woodhaven Boulevard stop would be converted to an express station to reflect this change).
    • A "super-express bypass" that would utilize the LIRR's Main Line to skip all stops between 36th Street and Forest Hills, to be used during rush hours.
  • The 2nd Avenue Line was first proposed way back in 1920 and became more pressing with the demolition of the 2nd and 3rd Avenue els that used to serve the East Side of Manhattan until the 1940s and 1950s — currently, the nearest line that serves the area is the Lexington Avenue Line (the 4, 5, and 6 trains), which alone serves more passengers than the entire Washington Metro system (the second-busiest mass transit system in the US). City bond issues for the line were approved by voters twice (1951 and 1967^note Leading to a major and rather bitter Historical In-Joke for New Yorkers in Season 6 of Mad Men, where Peggy is looking at an apartment on the Upper East Side near Second Avenue and being told she's getting a big steal since the Second Avenue Subway should be built soon) and construction finally began in 1972...right before the city became insolvent. The idea was finally put back on track in 2005 with another voter-approved bond issue, and the first segment from Lexington Avenue-63rd Street to 96th Street finally opened on January 1, 2017, as an extension of the Q train from the Broadway Line.
  • Staten Island does not have subway service. It does have its own rapid transit line, the Staten Island Railway (SIR) that is descended from the "Staten Island Rapid Transit" service that was operated by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which the MTA took over in 1971. Over the years, various attempts to link Staten Island through either a tunnel or via the Verrazano Bridge and connect it with the 4th Avenue Line south of 95th Street have been shot down like the other expansion proposals. On the 4th Avenue Line, provisions were built in anticipation of the proposed connection, including plans to extend the express tracks south of 59th Street. The SIR also electrified its lines and purchased subway cars in preparation for this never-materialized expansion.
• A similar story applies for the Roosevelt Boulevard Subway, a proposed extension/branch of Philadelphia's Broad Street Line. First proposed in 1913 and first seriously studied in the 1940s, they actually began tentative construction in 1967, and funding was approved for the project in the early 1970s...just before local opposition in Northeast Philadelphia (which would be served by the route) put the kibosh on it for reasons that had nothing to do with race riots. By the 1990s, support for the project picked up, but by that point, the money was gone, spent to build a (much-needed) tunnel connecting the city's three main commuter/intercity rail stations (30th Street, Suburban, and Market East) (and a station at Temple University). Today, there's talk of going through with it...if a plan to enhance bus service along the route indicates that a higher-capacity service would be used. (We should note that Uncle Sam already rates it as the highest potential ridership of any unbuilt transit line after the Second Avenue Line.)
• Supposedly, the strategic plan for New York City's MTA accountant for the subway system's dire need to modernize, especially for accessibility purposes. The majority of subway stations in New York City aren't wheelchair accessible, but the issue seems to have taken a back seat to the construction of the Second Avenue Subway and the IRT Flushing Line extension, not to mention repairing the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.

• The expansion of I-69 into a true Canada-to-Mexico corridor has been on the drawing board since the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. It was supposed to have been completed around 2012. Planned segments in southern Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi (planned to connect the existing northern I-69 route to I-69 in Texas) have been bogged down in political wrangling and budget woes since 2011.
  • Even before that, I-69 had a big gap for several miles on either side of Lansing, Michigan. From 1973 to 1992, a "Temporary I-69" designation was placed on a surface highway with intersections until the Interstate was finally completed.
• Warsaw Metro rail system was envisioned as early as 1920s. Crisis, war and destruction of most of the city delayed construction until 1984 when first tunnels were dug. It wasn't until 1995 when first half (between city center and south) of the first line was finished (for those counting, that's around 2 meters a day). Stations further north were gradually built and opened until completion in 2008. Luckily, despite some delays, the second line is progressing quicker (started 2010, first stations to be opened in late 2014).
• Currently, I-73 exists as a rather short intrastate highway (around 100 miles or so) connecting Stokesdale and Ellerbe, North Carolina. Plans to extend it southward to just north of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, seem to be ready to go, but northward to an undisclosed location (Roanoke, VA and Grayling, MI, the latter at US 127's terminus at I-75, being among the locations kicked about) has run into similar problems that I-69 faces.
• New York City's largest train station, Penn Station, is currently a rather dreary underground complex beneath Madison Square Garden that feels more like an airport, especially when compared to Grand Central Terminal, which has been lovingly restored. As the Garden has been facing land-use difficulty and people have never really forgotten the demolition of the original Beaux-Arts Penn Station in 1963, there is currently an ungodly struggle between those who want to renovate the old James Farley Post Office next door and turn it into a new rail hub (to be named Moynihan Station after the great sociologist, diplomat, and Senator from New York Daniel Patrick Moynihan) and those who want MSG to pack up and go somewhere else with a new Penn Station to be rebuilt on the old site. A lack of money for either project has kept this tension bubbling along since at least 2000. The post office renovation plan eventually won out and the Moynihan Train Hall opened on January 1st, 2021.
• New York City also had the East Side Access project. Originally part of the Second Avenue subway project (see above), this was to be an extension of the Long Island Railroad to a new terminus at 3rd Avenue and 48th Street, running through the lower section of the bi-level 63rd Street tunnel. Construction began in 1969 with the line now going to Grand Central Terminal rather than 3rd Ave. & 48th. St., but was put on hold in 1975 when NYC went broke. The subway portion of the project (which used the upper section of the 63rd St. tunnel) was (mostly) completed in 1989, but the lower portion of the tunnel sat abandoned and mostly unfinished until 2006 when the city finally found the funding to finish construction. The new station, now called Grand Central Madison, opened on January 25, 2023. Here's what a $12 billion train station that took 54 years to finish looks like.^note A similar project called the Penn Station Access project will bring Metro North trains though the East Bronx (with 4 new stations along the way) to Penn Station. Construction is expected to be completed in 2027, time will tell if it gets its own entry on this page.
• When the Las Vegas Monorail opened along the east side of the Vegas Strip in 2004, connecting several of the Strip's casino resorts, the original plans had it expanding to nearby McCarran International Airport and Downtown Vegas, but its ridership has never been enough to warrant such. The primary reason for this is that the stations are located at the far back of the resorts, many of them are sprawling, and none of the resorts on the other side of Las Vegas Boulevard are included, so most visitors find it quicker to walk from the entrances of one resort to another, especially resorts that aren't on the line. Even the hopes that it would ease the Strip's notorious traffic congestion failed to be fulfilled.
  • Interestingly, in the game Fallout: New Vegas, the monorail does go from downtown New Vegas to the airport. So apparently, they finished it some time before the nuclear apocalypse in 2077.
• Washington, D.C.'s Dulles International Airport has three main buildings: the main terminal, housing ticketing, check-in, a number of other things, and the "Z" gates, and two long "midfield" terminal buildings parallel to the main one, the closer building housing Concourses A and B and the farther one housing Concourses C and D. The farther one is supposedly a "temporary" building (despite housing United Airlines, for which Dulles is a major hub)...and has been since it was built in 1983. They haven't even started accepting proposals for the design of the "permanent" building.
• The Southeastern Parkway and Greenbelt, a proposed highway connecting the cities of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake in southeastern Virginia, was first proposed in 1985 as a means to alleviate traffic congestion along the interstates and surface roads in Southside Hampton Roads and provide a new inlet to Virginia Beach, which was then connected to the rest of the area only by State Road 44, a tolled highway. Since this point, it's been killed and re-proposed multiple times, with the two cities variously backing out to divert resources to other roadway projects inside their own borders. Hampton Roads' unified transportation authority has also roadblocked the proposed roadway at various points, and even when all three parties have finally settled in and jointly approved a plan to build the Southeastern Parkway, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Highway Administration and/or the Environmental Protection Agency have jointly or individually killed every proposal.
  
  Most routes had the Virginia Beach end of the Parkway starting at the former SR-44, which was remarked as an extension of Interstate 264 at the Turn of the Millennium,^note before this point, I-264 ended at the junction with I-64 in Norfolk where SR-44 began; the rebadge officially extended 264 to 23 miles from 14 just outside of Oceana Naval Air Station, and looping around to the south and west; the Chesapeake end, meanwhile, would have tied in at the junction of I-64, I-464 and VA-168,^note itself a partially tolled expressway at this point, after looping over from Battlefield Boulevard via I-64; it ends just north of the North Carolina Border over-riding Dominion Boulevard, which was badged as VA-104 until around the same time as the 44-to-264 switchover, when Dominion was redesignated as US-17.^note the former US-17 south of I-64, George Washington Highway, was rebadged as 17-Business at this point The problem with any route connecting these two points is that all the land in between is either heavily developed or swamps, and with all the swampland that's already been torn out to build South Hampton Roads and the associated problems with flooding, the federal government has proven leery to approve any more such conversion. The last environmental study was terminated in 2010, at which point the local parties moved on to other projects, such as improvements to I-264 in Virginia Beach,^note it's still the only highway into Virginia Beach to this day, and traffic studies have indicated that while its number of lanes has doubled in the last forty years, its traffic volume has increased tenfold; it also comes nowhere close to meeting federal highway standards due to its origins as a non-interstate highway some of which have reached the early construction phase while others have entered Development Hell due to issues with the suburban sprawl along the highway's length; investigating proposals for a new crossing over the James River between the Southside and Peninsula sections of Hampton Roads; and a conversion of US-17 south of I-64 to an elevated highway to alleviate both the traffic problems and massive flooding issues from the Elizabeth River^note this project was launched in 2012 and finished in fall 2016, about nine months ahead of schedule.
• Also from Eastern Virginia, the expansion of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to four lanes. While the above-water portion of the roadway (the only direct link between the Eastern Shore and mainland Virginia, specifically northern Virgnia Beach)^note the larger Delmarva Peninsula, of which the Eastern Shore comprises the southern half, has exactly one other mainland link within the Bay - the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland has been four lanes since construction of parallel bridge spans and subsequent rehabilitation of the orignal spans was finished in 1999, the addition of accompanying parallel tubes to the current two-lane tunnel sections (located underneath the Thimble Shoals and Chesapeake shipping channels^note due to concerns from the U.S. Navy that high rise bridge sections could collapse from either accidents or deliberate attacks and block the exit of warships and civilian shipping from Hampton Roads and other points in the Bay; high-rise spans were used at the North Channel and Fisherman's Inlet Channel as neither is considered viable for larger commercial or military traffic) was indefintely postponed in 2005 over concerns about funding.^note the roadway's exorbitant tolls, usually no less than $15 for a one-way trip, typically go back into servicing and inspections, which run continuously in five-year cycles; meanwhile, potential sources of funding from the state were set aside for other traffic projects in Hampton Roads, many of which have higher traffic volumes than the CBBT In 2012, plans were finally put back on the books, and preliminary work began in summer 2017 - but only for the southern tunnel at Thimble Shoals; the northern tunnel at Chseapeake Channel won't see construction on its parallel tube begin until at least 2037.
• Any large scale intercity rail infrastructure in the US. Take California as an example. Back in the 1980s governor Jerry Brown (at the time one of the youngest in California history) had the wacky idea of building a High Speed Rail link from San Francisco to Los Angeles, just like France was doing at the time and Germany was getting ready to for their major cities. Ultimately nothing came of it before he left office, but numerous groups continued to push and lobby waiting for the right moment to get a ballot measure passed, which ultimately happened in 2008. Obama (at that time still with filibuster-proof majorities in both houses) proposed a federal high speed rail program and California was to be one of the beneficiaries. In 2015 governor Jerry Brown (in his fourth term, now one of the oldest in California history) could finally announce that construction would start and personally attended a groundbreaking ceremony. If all goes as planned, trains will be running as soon as the early 2020s - over part of the route.
  • And as of 2023, work on massive sections of the initial segment(s) in the Central Valley - the part that was supposed to be operational by 2018 - hasn't even commenced. The odds presently favor getting something operational by the end of the decade. In the meantime, a private-sector project to connect LA to Las Vegas seems likely to get done first.
• Florida's High Speed Rail project gets a mention here. It's nowhere as insane as what's played out in California, but the state initially had a high-speed rail corridor designated in the early 1990s. The voters amended the state constitution in 2000 to require the completion of a system between Miami and Tampa via Orlando. It then languished for much of the 2000s as the (Jeb!) Bush administration turned on the project and got the amendment repealed. However, the environmental scoping for the project was still completed by 2005. As a result, it got significant funding in 2009/10 from the Obama administration...only for the new Governor (Rick Scott) to return the money over concerns about operating deficits (and the fact that the initial segment was only going to run from the Orlando airport to Tampa, with no clear path to get money for the rest of the project), and despite a revolt in the legislature he succeeded in doing so, killing the project in that form.
  • At that point, however, the owners of the Florida East Coast Railroad (which hadn't run passenger trains since 1968) took one look at the work done and decided to pursue the project themselves. The initial segment "only" took about six years from initial announcement to commencement of service, though service to Orlando is still (as of June 2023) a month or two in the future due to intervening lawsuits. Still, this is less time than the study work on many other projects takes, so there's that...
  • Service to Tampa also seems likely in the future (it is being actively pursued, albeit with no concrete timeline), so the whole project might still come to pass...though given that the project is now a private-sector one and recent rising interest rates...
• The Verkehrsprojekte Deutsche Einheit or traffic projects of German unity. As the name indicates they were set up after reunification to reestablish severed connections between East and West and restore the deteriorated East German transit networks to a more modern state. While some of the projects are now finished, as of this writing (2016) several still aren't - and for some there is not even a tentative date for completion. One of the most important, a High Speed Rail link from Berlin to Nuremberg (and from there onwards to Munich) is still only half done. The Berlin-Leipzig section (200km/h^note  That's roughly 125 miles per hour) opened in 2006. The Leipzig-Erfurt section (300 km/h) opened in December 2015 and the Nuremberg-Erfurt section (mostly 300km/h) opened in December 2017. That's almost three decades after the need to build this ASAP was declared by the federal government.
• The Leipzig City Tunnel - a rail tunnel under downtown Leipzig. Suffice to say that a first attempt to build it was interrupted by the First World War and ultimately Angela Merkel was a guest of honor at the grand opening.
• The Channel Tunnel between England and France. According to historians, Napoleon Bonaparte discussed the topic with a British counterpart during (ultimately futile) peace negotiations and the topic came up in various forms throughout the 19th and 20th century. Construction ultimately started in late 1987 and the first trains in revenue service ran in 1994. While the tunnel (or rather the trains that run in it) now accounts for a larger chunk of the London-Paris travel market than all airlines combined, it is still perceived (particularly in Britain) as too expensive due to cost overruns and economic problems with the private company that was supposed to own operate and make a profit from the tunnel.
• With all the transportation infrastructure getting stuck in development hell forever mentioned above, the few aversions stick out even more. Most French LGV (Lignes a Grande Vitesse, high speed lines) were built within a decade of their first conception. This is mostly because the TGV is incredibly popular in France and being against it is the political equivalent of running a campaign in the US in opposition to apple pie and firefighters. However, since the Turn of the Millennium and in The New '10s, some projects have gotten a certain run in with Not in My Backyard! types as well.
• Rome's Metro system is pretty small. Construction of the third line, Line C, has progressed very slowly. This is in large part because Line C runs through some of the most historic parts of the Eternal City, and when you're digging a tunnel between the Caelian and Palatine Hills, it's basically impossible not to run into some kind of trove of priceless Ancient Roman artifacts that the archaeologists have to carefully excavate before work can start again. Not wanting to wait before central Rome has finally been pierced for interchanges, the outer stretches have already been built and put into service to a generous degree before.
  • The metro systems in Athens and Thessaloniki have had similar issues.
• There currently is an Interstate 74; it begins in Cinncinati, Ohio and runs to Iowa, just on the other side of the Mississippi River. Then there's the other Interstate 74 in North Carolina. Currently this highway consists of several disconnected segments, all of which are in the state:
  • One segment begins in a concurrency with Interstate 77 at the NC/Virginia border and ends south of Mount Airy at US 52.
  • Another segment begins at I-40 in Winston-Salem and ends in Ellerbe. (Incidentally, 74 spends much of this segment concurred with I-73, which, as seen above, is an example of this itself)
  • One segment in the southern part of the state running along US 74 between Rockingham and Lumberton.
  • The plan is to connect both sections of I-74 in some way (so the Interstate runs uninterrupted from Iowa to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (where Interstate 73 also happens to be proposed to end), but political and budgetary difficulties mean that this will likely take a good long while, if it ever happens at all.
• The Berlin U- and S-Bahn has a "200-Kilometer-Plan" dating back to the 1950s, that would make the U-Bahn a 200-km system. As of 2017, the system is just over 150 km long and obviously many elements of that plan still haven't been built. While some may never see the light of day, there are a few interesting cases, like an extension to Tegel Airport, which is now planned to be built once the airport shuts down to better connect the neighborhood that will be built on the grounds. Or they will just extend the tram which, at the time the 200 km plan was written, was in the process of being wound down in the West. The most ocular legacies are two bi-level cross-platform interchange stations where one track is served by a line and another isn't and is fenced in instead: Jungfernheide (U7, lacking U5) and Schlossstraße (U9, lacking U10).
• Interstate 3, also known as the Third Infantry Division Highway, was proposed as a new interstate highway back in 2005 as a means to link Savannah, Georgia with Augusta, Georgia and Knoxville, Tennessee. Well over a decade has passed since the highway was first proposed, and from day one it has been stuck in this trope due to not just budgetary issues, but also environmental concerns^note (owing to the fact that the highway would likely have to cut straight through the Appalachian Mountains in order to get to Knoxville; you can easily guess why people would have a problem with this) and indecision over the route Interstate 3 would actually take to get to Knoxville (especially in regards to the aforementioned environmental concerns). By comparison, fellow interstate highway Interstate 14 (a highway set to run from Fort Stockton, Texas to the Augusta area) was proposed at the same time Interstate 3 was, and while it did take a while for that highway to be officially greenlit, it still hasn't been hit with nearly as much trouble as Interstate 3 has; eventually getting its first 25-mile long segment in Texas in January 2017 and having its Georgia segment (the Fall Line Freeway) planned and being built as of this writing.
• Right next to the EPR project special credit must go to the Lyon-Turin project which consists of building a high-speed line between the third most populous and second most wealthy metropolis in France on the Western side and the fourth most populous and third most wealthy metropolis of Italy, on the Eastern side of the border. The project began to really gather steam from 2004 onward and truly began in late 2016, with the bilateral treaty that provides for the budget and the red-tape accreditation being validated by the French Senate on the 26th of January, the year after. As of now, in September 2018, we can say that the work really is in progress, but it is still widely regarded as one of France's worst "white elephant" projects ever.
• For decades the city of San Antonio, Texas, has had two major thoroughfares named Wurzbach: one called Wurzbach Road and the other Wurzbach Parkway. Throughout almost all of that time the two thoroughfares were disconnected from each other, with the only way to get from one to the other being via much smaller side streets. Construction began on a connection between the two thoroughfares in 1994; some twenty-one years later in 2015, the project finally ended and the two thoroughfares were joined at last.
• The New Airport for Mexico City (Both the one from Texcoco, and its Spiritual Successor in Santa Lucía) has gone through several construction problems, political machinations, PR disasters and cost overruns, that if it wasn't due to Mexico City's current airport overcrowding and infrastructure issues, it would have been abandoned already. Here's the story:
  • Plans to build the airport come from the early 2000's, when the Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City (AICM) was on the verge of exceeding its limit of allowed inbound and outbound aircraft operations; during Vicente Fox Quesada's tenure, in which, after obtaining the land for federal use in the nearby town of San Salvador Atenco, ended up pummeled by a never-ending barrage of Recursos de Amparo and a riot against the authorities by the inhabitants of the town (who didn't see the need for an airport near their town) that stalled the construction as well as violent protests from landowners, and it was quietly abandoned by his administration and his successor Felipe Calderón. Instead, a new terminal was built at AICM, but by 2012 it was already saturated.
  • Enrique Peña Nieto chose to restart the construction in 2014 (though this time around in a different place) over protests from the opposition (now-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and members of his party were notorious on making a fuss on the airport issue, by claiming it was an extremely expensive piece of work). This airport began to sink in the dried lakebed where it was built upon, and while a solution was implemented (in the form of pylons that were set up to prevent further sinking and a system of pumps that would redirect the water to other lakes in the area), a devaluation of the Mexican Peso in the midst of the Peña Nieto administration hiked up the construction costs. On the plus side, the government investment on it was minimal, and it was to be wholly financed by private firms.
  • To make things worse, and with Peña Nieto's popularity in freefall, then-candidate López Obrador proposed a cheaper alternative, which would consist in remodeling a Mexican Air Force base in Santa Lucía, north of Mexico City, along with several infrastructure projects that would allow for easy access to the airport. However, said project did not have any kind of certification backing up its viability, using only a preliminary report from NavBlue to back it up, while using in tandem the Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City and the Toluca International Airport to take on other routes, and announcing it would not cost anything to the Mexicans to use it. The politization of the Mexico City airport was one of the many factors that allowed him to win the presidential elections by a landslide in 2018.
  • In the last months of 2018, López Obrador and his supporters made a referendum to give a pretense of legality to the cancellation of the Texcoco Airport, which was clearly set up to allow only his supporters to vote, and that they would vote to cancel it. To no one's surprise, the option to cancel it won, and in the end, the construction of the Texcoco airport was abandoned by López Obrador, paying no heed to the warnings of experts and environmentalists, who stated that the best option was to continue the works at the Texcoco airport (and dismissed their warnings as ideological rabble rousing). The area in which the airport is being built was flooded, and there are plans to turn it into an ecopark. But by doing so, he precipitated another economical crisis in the country, and not to mention that the Mexican Government not only had to cover the construction costs of the Santa Lucía refurbished airport, but also pay off the cancellations of all of the contracts that were awarded by the Mexican government to all the companies working in the Texcoco airport.
  • However, the Santa Lucía airport also has run into even more problems, just like its predecessor: the site has a freaking mountain in front of it, radioactive waste that has to be taken away, mammoth bones that have been found on the construction sites, the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines telling the government that they refuse to use that airport due to being uncertified by all civil aviation authorities, cost overruns and contract irregularities, and also, a never ending barrage of lawsuits against the Mexican government by companies affected by the cancellation of works in Texcoco and by private citizens that have voiced their concerns on the government disregarding all kinds of certifications and environmental laws for the airport.
  • While it was partially inaugurated on March 21, 2022 in what was mostly a propagandistic event for López Obrador (the day after, the airport practically sat empty), concerns about its long-term operation still linger^note This airport is too far away from Mexico City (Texcoco Airport was just outside of the Mexico City metro) has less runways than the Texcoco airport, and has caused even more air traffic problems to the Mexico City airport due to proximity and air traffic flow issues, and as a bonus, a Mexican politician -Enrique de la Madrid- promised that he will close down this airport and restart the construction of Texcoco should he be elected in 2024., and only a single terminal building was finished. Not to mention that the airport is very hard to reach (many of the access roads and railway lines proposed to reach this airport haven't even been built yet, ridesharing apps such as Uber and Didi do not go there, and Mexico City's infamous traffic can cause the trip to and from the airport to be longer than the flight itself), the airport having no storefronts, the construction of this airport somehow got more expensive than the Texcoco airport despite the corners cut, and the design of the airport has been widely mocked online for looking unsightly and cheap, and for looking more like a supermarket or a glorified bus station^note It doesn't help at all that the Texcoco airport was designed by Norman Foster, and the renders looked like something out of Mass Effect, and the current Felipe Ángeles airport was disowned by its main architect, who noted that the Mexican Army construction teams deviated significantly from the original design. To add even more salt to the wound, the Texcoco airport won several design awards despite the fact it was cancelled, earning it the derisive nicknames "Central Avionera"^note a pun on "Central Camionera"("Bus Depot" in Spanish), "Aeromuerto"^note Aero-Deadport, and CHAIFA^note A portmanteau of Chafa (which means "of poor quality" in Mexican Spanish) and AIFA, which is the airport's acronym. The new airport serves a paltry 8 routes a day, and its sole international route is that of Venezuela's state-run airline Conviasa (it doesn't help that López Obrador is one of the few Latin American presidents in good terms with Nicolás Maduro).
• Interstate 696,^note a.k.a. the Walter P. Reuther Freeway a northern bypass of the city of Detroit through its northern suburbs, was first envisioned in the original Interstate Highway System plan from 1955, where it was to be numbered I-98^note a number that is still unused in the Interstate System. Construction of the first segment, connecting I-96 in Novi and Orchard Lake Road in Farmington Hills, began in 1961 and was completed on July 29, 1963, but not before the completed portion of the Lodge Freeway in Detroit (extending from downtown to Wyoming Avenue) was designated as a business spur route of I-696 in 1962.^note the Lodge Freeway was later redesignated as part of US-10 in 1970 and re-redesignated as part of M-10 in 1986 Controversy arose in the 1960s and 1970s with the goal of shutting down construction of the central portion of I-696 in southeastern Oakland County, whose construction would disrupt, among others, a wetland in Southfield, an Orthodox Jewish community in Oak Park, the Detroit Zoo, an adjacent golf course, and the northernmost portions of Pleasant Ridge, where Michigan Governor James Blanchard was raised and had returned to in 1972. This controversy became intense to the point of his predecessor, George W. Romney, locking bureaucrats in a community center until they agreed on a path for the central segment. Once this was all sorted out, the last segment of I-696, between the Mixing Bowl interchange^note which connects I-696 to the Lodge Freeway and Telegraph Road in Southfield and the Hilton Road-Campbell Road exit on the Royal Oak-Ferndale border, finally opened to traffic on December 15, 1989 after 34 years of planning and construction.
  "Do you realize we have been to the moon and back in the time it has taken to get that road from Ferndale to Southfield?"

  — A caller to a Detroit radio show around the time I-696's final segment opened.

Miscellaneous

• Neon Alley in Canada. Need we say more?^note That notice has been facing Canada since April 2014. In 2016, Viz Media brought some of its series to Canadian streamers through Tubi TV.
• The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 has been proceeding slowly, even though IPv4 addresses have been exhausted. IPv6 was formalized in 1998 and modern operating systems and networking equipment have supported it since the 2000s but ISPs have been slow to roll out IPv6 because of a combination of the expense of upgrading and NAT reducing the demand for new IP addresses. While some large datacenters use IPv6 internally, most ISPs and public-facing sites implement dual-stack configurations that support both IPv6 and IPv4 for backward compatibility.
• The creator of Vine was displeased on how Twitter managed to acquire his creation and then mismanage it until it was shut down in 2017. So he decided to create a self-funded replacement named "V2" and planned to unveil it in mid-2018. However, lack of funds and legal troubles (for one, the logo is very similar to the Vine one) ensured that this project was shelved indefinitely. Eventually, however, development began again, and it was launched in 2020 as "Byte".

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