The “Bangkok Elevated Road and Train System” (BERTS), a.k.a. Hopewell, a.k.a. the Hopeless Project, was scheduled to be up and running by 1995. Way before we even had a BTS, Hopewell was to run above existing railways and include both a highway and a mass transit railway all stacked on top of each other. There was even a little shopping mall corridor thrown in. Except it all went under and less than 10% of the project was ever built, leaving 1,000 dilapidated concrete arches slowly crumbling along the way to Don Mueang. Last week, The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) finally signed a B21.2 billion deal with Italthai to clear the pillars and start work on the 21km Red Line from Bang Sue to Rangsit, charted for completion in 2016. Just getting rid of the pillars is going to cost B200 million, but if you’re feeling nostalgic, you’ll be happy to know they estimate 10% of them can be kept and re-used for the Red Line.