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Bridge to Nowhere
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The Skye Bridge, connecting the Isle of Skye to mainland Scotland, was one of the UK's earliest Public-Private Partnerships. Opened in 1995, it was financed and constructed by a private consortium under a 27-year concession. The bridge replaced a ferry service and promised faster, more reliable access to the island. ​ Until here… nothing new or strange under the sun. Right? ​ Except that nobody told the locals… ​ The private consortium set tolls significantly higher than anticipated, charging £5.40 for a single car trip (equivalent to nearly £12 today). Quite expensive. With no ferries now… no alternative. Logically, with a take it or leave it proposal, the locals were not very happy. They protested. They organized. And they discover a loophole to not pay the tolls. Technically, they could legally cross the bridge on foot or horseback without paying. ​ Ahhh… I love British ingenuity and bored lawyers… ​ So you know what locals did? ​ They started walking their cars across the bridge. They stopped their cars before the toll booth, get out, and push the vehicle across the bridge while pretending to “walk.” Some even staged mock parades with banners, treating the toll booth as an amusement park attraction. ​ And now… the media. Of course these bizarre scenes gained national media attention and turned the Skye Bridge toll booth into a symbol of corporate overreach. ​ The protests escalated, with locals staging sit-ins, boycotts, and blocking the bridge entirely. The toll revenue model, which heavily relied on tourist traffic, fell short of expectations because many visitors were deterred by the negative publicity. Finally, the Scottish Government bought back the bridge in 2004 for £27 million, effectively ending the toll system nine years into the 27-year concession. ​ Typical case study in poor stakeholder engagement and overly optimistic financial modelling ​ To this day, the bridge is remembered as the “Bridge to Nowhere (Profit-Wise)” - a humorous yet significant lesson in PPP planning. ​ I have some other funny stories from my last project… below. ​
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Vicente Valencia
I talk about Personal Growth, Management, Infrastructure and More | C-Suite Executive | Mentor, Coach, Strategic Consultant | Real Estate Investor | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
If you believe that “serious” countries are exempt of terror stories in the infrastructure space, think twice. Even in the UK, the had the case of the Ghost Toll Booths. The M6, a big PPP project in the middle of the country opened in 2003. Cost, around 900 million pounds. The project was financed through a mix of equity and debt, relying heavily on toll revenues to repay lenders and provide returns to investors. And as it happens with many projects, the financing model for the M6 Toll...
The Channel Tunnel, or "Chunnel," connecting the UK and France, was one of the most ambitious engineering feats of the 20th century. Over £9 billion or about $21 billion today. 50.5 kilometers (31.4 miles) of tunnel under the English Channel. Politicians smelling the blood of taxpayers… Paradise for corruption and things that can go wrong. During the project, some lonely managers noticed something strange. The daily records for soil removal from the British side of the tunnel didn’t add up....
Imagine this. The Big Dig in the 90s. A massive highway infrastructure project in Boston, Massachusetts, that aimed to reroute Interstate 93 into a 3.5-mile tunnel beneath the city. One of the largest and most complex infrastructure projects in U.S. history. Total cost, over $14.6 billion. Initial estimation, $2.8 bn. So typical. Well… as you can imagine, this required many workers… thousands and thousands of them. And workers, from time to time, need to do first and second… especially, after...