At any rate, the sheikh can console himself with the knowledge that the metro will be the world's biggest computer-operated train system, and its Union Station will have the world's biggest underground railway concourse.

ECONOMIST: A metro for the Emirates

Yet it is just the highest profile in a string of big-ticket projects including a concert hall in Hamburg, railway tunnels in Munich and Leipzig, a subway line in Cologne and a Stuttgart underground train station that have been plagued by huge cost overruns and delays.

NPR: Berlin's Airport Project Delays Shame Germans