Germany - failed technology, corrupt political culture, part one

The US government has no monopoly on incompetence and ineptness--

Berlin's new airport stands empty, unused--tens of thousands of technical problems. . . Officials can't even figure out how to turn the lights off. Thousands of light bulbs illuminate the gigantic main terminal and unused parking lots around the clock, a massive energy and cost drain that appears to be the result of a computer system that's so sophisticated it's almost impossible to operate. Every day, an empty commuter train rolls to the unfinished airport over an eight-kilometer-long (five-mile) stretch to keep the newly-laid tracks from getting rusty . . . The airport itself points to problems with the fire safety system as the immediate cause of the delays: The fire safety system incorporates some 75,000 sprinklers, but computer programming glitches mean it's not clear whether all of these sprinklers would spray enough water during a fire. And the system's underground vent system, designed to suck away smoke, isn't working. Here, again, technology's getting in the way: It's so advanced that technicians can't figure out what's wrong with it....Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/07/v-fullstory/3328187/berlins-airport-project-delays.html#storylink=cpy

Tomorrow's post will focus on Germany's corrupt political culture which is the deeper "structural" problem behind Germany's technology failures.

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