Name the System
THE BOLIVARIAN CABLE Train was an elevated railroad planned for a poor neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela. It ended up running for only threefifths of a mile and connecting to nothing.
By 2012, four years into the project, the government had spent about $440 million on it and the project was only partly finished. But the country’s socialist leader, Hugo Chávez, decided that he wanted to take a ride on live television. The contractors told his handlers the train wasn’t ready yet; the cable, motors, and machinery had not even been installed.
“No European engineer is going to tell the people of Venezuela what can or cannot be done,” Chávez’s lackey replied. So the government paid an extra million dollars for a temporary setup that might fool the TV audience. An ebullient Chávez (seemingly oblivious that the fragile, makeshift operation nearly sent him
