Our list of ill-conceived civic expenditure, topped by Toronto’s costly subway stop, spurred Guardian Cities readers to share suggestions for more …

Colin Horgan’s roundup of urban white elephants prompted many Guardian Cities readers to suggest some he might have missed, revealing a veritable herd of the things the world over – including some perhaps prejudged. Call them calves.



Olympic stadium, Montreal

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Montreal’s Olympic stadium, complete with 65-ton Kevlar roof. Photograph: Shaun Best/Reuters

Many readers singled out the “the Big Owe”, constructed for the 1976 Olympic Games and plagued with problems ever since. According to CBC News, it cannot be used if there is more than 3cm of snow on the roof, meaning it is effectively out of action from November to March. In the last year alone, the roof tore 677 times – up from 496 times on the preceding 12-month period – and cost C$498,000 (£290,000) to maintain.

The $3.35bn subway station – and other urban white elephants Read more

Michel Labrecque, the president of the Olympic installations board that oversees the stadium, last month defended the Quebec government’s plans to install a new $250m roof on the steadily deteriorating building by 2023. “It’s part of what we call the patrimoine. My father, your father, paid for it, built it,” he said in response to suggestions it could be more cost-effective to tear the whole thing down. “So it’s impossible, foolish to think about dismantling it.”

Mirabel international airport, Montreal



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mirabel international airport, Montreal. Photograph: Alamy

Montreal made another costly mistake ahead of the 1976 Games. Mirabel airport, about 24 miles (40km) north-west of the city, was intended by federal and municipal governments to replace the existing Dorval airport and set a new standard for North America – it was the world’s largest airport until 1999. But problems became apparent soon after it opened in 1975.

The promised high-speed rail line had not been built, meaning it could take well over an hour to reach the city, and with Dorval retaining domestic flights, connections required a bus journey between the two. Eventually, longer-range jets were introduced, meaning flights no longer needed to stop to refuel in Mirabel.

By 1997, Dorval airport had reopened to international flights and Mirabel had been reduced to handling only cargo – though its vast, sparse surrounds lent themselves to cinema. Scenes from The Terminal, the 2004 film starring Tom Hanks, and the 2013 zombie romance Warm Bodies were shot there before demolition started on the passenger terminal building. The last piece was razed last year.

Mattala Rajapaksa international airport, Sri Lanka

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The inauguration of Sri Lanka’s Mattala Rajapaksa international airport. Photograph: MA Pushpa Kumara/EPA

Sri Lanka’s second international airport opened in 2013 to serve one million domestic and international passengers a year. It was built in Mattala in response to predictions that Hambantota, a small town in the south of the island, would be its next urban hub – but it didn’t happen.

Airport manager Upul Kalansuriya told the BBC in June this year it was serving between 50 to 75 departing passengers a day.

The Edinburgh tram line

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trams run along Princes Street in Edinburgh. Photograph: Viewpoint/Rex/Shutterstock

As Cade notes in his conclusion, the Scottish government revealed last month that the cost of the inquiry into why the Edinburgh tram project was over-budget, established in 2014, has now reached £7.2m.

New Royal Adelaide hospital, South Australia

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The New Royal Adelaide hospital. Photograph: HYLC

It might be too early to call it a white elephant, but the New Royal Adelaide hospital opened in mid-August over budget and about 17 months behind schedule. Australia’s most expensive building, it cost more than A$2.3bn after the state government agreed to pay an extra $34.3m to settle a dispute with builders.

Repayments of more than $1m a day reportedly commenced after commercial acceptance was finalised in June, meaning taxpayers spent close to $100m on the building before it received its first patient. When it did finally open, nearly half of the operating theatres were found to be unsuitable for surgery, with pendant lights hanging dangerously low.

As commenter Betfaj pointed out, over in Western Australia, the similarly delayed, billion-dollar Perth children’s hospital is expected to finally open in May – though issues persist with lead contamination of its water supply.

“This is what happens when project management collides with political opening deadlines,” observed DrROFLMAO.

National stadium, Beijing

The “Bird’s Nest” stadium was designed as the main facility of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Since then it has served mostly as a tourist attraction – and the site of a few conferences – while costing $11m a year to operate and illuminate.

In 2012, Ai Weiwei said he regretted his involvement as an artistic consultant, adding that he hadn’t looked at the stadium since the Games. It is hoped, however, that it will come into its own in 2022, for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics.

The Big Dig, Boston

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A view of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, Boston – site of the Big Dig. Photograph: Bill Sikes/AP

Boston’s Central Artery “megaproject” was scheduled to be completed in 1998 at an estimated cost of $2.8bn in 1982. It was completed only in December 2007, after being plagued by delays and cost overruns throughout the design and construction phases.

The ceiling of one of the tunnels had collapsed the previous year, killing a woman. Builders had used the wrong glue to hold the anchor bolts in place, a mistake that would have cost $1.50 per anchor to mitigate. “It’s kind of ironic in a $14bin project,” Deborah AP Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, was quoted as saying.

She was lowballing it. In 2012, a Massachusetts state official put the total cost of the Big Dig at an estimated $24.3bn, making it the most expensive highway project in US history.

Allianz and ANZ stadiums, Sydney

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sydney’s Allianz stadium. Next to it is Sydney cricket ground. Photograph: stellalevi/Getty Images

The New South Wales state government’s proposal to spend $2bn knocking down and rebuilding two stadiums has proved a hard sell – not least because it has not released a business case for either project. A petition started by a newspaper columnist calling on the NSW cabinet to reconsider its decision, pointing to “ZERO public demand to replace either”, has drawn close to its target of 150,000.



Guardian Australia’s Matt Cleary said the state government was making a transparent attempt to address Sydney sport fans’ lacklustre track record of attendance by “building a couple of whopping, flash new stadiums”. He wrote: “As Marge Simpson often says to Homer: Hmmmmm.”

More Calatrava

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A boy cycles across the Zubizurri footbridge – newly installed with safety carpet. Photograph: Vincent West/Reuters

Architect Santiago Calatrava, cited by Horgan for his City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, was identified by readers as a repeat offender.

Of course we don’t know that Calatrava failed to take rain into account – but the New York Times reported that some 50 citizens injured themselves, some breaking legs or hips, when walking across its glass tiles between 1997 and 2013.

According to the Times, the city of Bilbao laid a huge black rubber carpet over Calatrava’s Zubizurri footbridge in 2011. Ibon Areso, then the acting mayor, acknowledged that the carpet was to the detriment of the bridge’s beauty – “But we can’t keep paying people who slip and fall.”

Commenter Genza65 noted that Bilbao’s airport is also a Calatrava design – and that when it opened in 2000, it lacked an arrivals hall: “You collected your baggage and ended up straight outside, in the inevitable rain.” (Airport authorities later installed a glass wall to shelter them, according to the Times.)

In the eyes of the Guardian’s then architecture critic, Jonathan Glancey, in his glowing review of November 2000, it all served to “put a little mystery and magic back into air travel”.

The Scottish Parliament Building

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Scottish Parliament Building, Edinburgh. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Twenty years ago the estimate for a new Scottish Parliament building was put at no more than £40m. It was finished in 2004, three years behind schedule, with a final bill of £414m.

Two years later, a 12ft-long wooden roof beam swung free in the debating chamber, forcing its closure for two months. Then, in 2011, a granite block came loose from a wall and was left hanging 20ft above the glass roof of the MSPs’ restaurant. There have also been issues with flooding.

According to a Scottish parliament corporate body report, the Holyrood building is currently worth only £304m, and could reach the end of its “useful life” by 2060.



The library of Birmingham

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The library of Birmingham. Photograph: David Sillitoe/The Guardian

The Library of Birmingham was opened in September 2013 by Nobel-winner Malala Yousafzai to “almost feverish” coverage, according to the BBC, which found it to be a major draw for the city in 2015.

But the Birmingham Mail reported in February last year that running the library cost close to £2m a month, with more than half down to interest payments on the £187m build. Cuts in 2014 saw most of the 188 staff members made redundant, and its opening hours reduced to 40 a week.

And a dodged bullet …

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Thames garden bridge. Photograph: Heatherwick Studio/PA

... but not before £37m of public money had been spent on it, without a brick being laid.

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