Venezuela’s Train to Nowhere

In 2011, Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, announced that he had cancer. The details of his illness, and his treatment by doctors in Cuba, remained a mystery: He wouldn’t say what type of cancer it was or where it had been found in his body. But a presidential election was scheduled for the following year, so in January 2012, Chávez announced that he was cured and prepared to start campaigning. Oil prices were high, and the government ramped up spending, building thousands of apartments and houses and broadcasting weekly televised giveaways, like game shows, where Chávez presented grateful families with the keys to their new homes. The government imported washers and dryers and televisions and cars, which it gave away or sold at subsidized prices. And it announced new public-works projects and rushed to show progress on those already under way.

One of those projects was an elevated train line in a Caracas slum called Petare. Construction had been puttering along for years. Now crews started working 24 hours a day. Petare, with its tens of thousands of poor families, had long been an important base of support for Chávez. But in 2008, an opposition mayoral candidate won a majority of votes there, and so something had to be done to shore up the base.

The project, called the Bolivarian Cable Train, was more about politics than transportation. It would have three stations and three-fifths of a mile of track. In theory