> Bergen, with a population just under 300,000, has spent 1 billion Norwegian kroner ($100 million) since it started building the system in 2007, and it still isn’t done. In unconnected neighborhoods, there are still plenty of old-school trash cans around, and garbage trucks continue to prowl. Finishing the network will take years and another 300 million kroner ($30 million), officials say. The difficulty lies not just in the cost — which will end up totaling about a year of the waste management division’s annual budget — but also in the logistical headache of digging up the city’s streets. Advertisement

> “It’s almost impossible,” said Terje Strom, who heads the infrastructure division of Bergen’s waste management company and has led the trash tube project from the start. Then, for emphasis, or perhaps to reassure himself, he repeated: “Almost.”

For those interested in such a system - consider in how efficient (or not) your own city is at construction/maintenance/operation of public infrastructure. How inclined some of your less-wonderful residents to break things. How easy it would be to tunnel through your local geology. And the likeliness of your local weather/water table/etc. re-purposing the waste tunnels as overflow storm sewers.

And, if you live in NYC - how would this system cope with the rats?