The failure of transport megaprojects: Lessons from developed and developing countries

Transport megaprojects are essential to economic growth and development, yet attract high risks and are prone to failure. Projects fail for a number of reasons and when they do, their impacts are severe. This is especially true in developing countries, where the cost of a project is typically far higher than those in developed countries, whose GDPs are much higher in relative terms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the failures of megaprojects in developing and developed countries to establish as basis for comparison in the reasons for project failure. The study finds that projects in developing countries tend to be poorly justified in feasibility studies and under-resourced in operations, making them particularly prone to high failure rates.