In the early 1990s, Colombia’s road infrastructure was a maze of poorly maintained roads and bad highways. Difficult geography—the Pacific coast jungle and the Andes branching out into three chains—made it harder to improve road conditions and connect isolated communities. Conflict, corruption, and short-term political priorities contributed to the problems plaguing Colombia’s road system. But just as influential were the problems with the nation’s existing concession contracts that had wrong incentives, created opportunities for renegotiating signed contracts, and assigned unproportioned demand risk to the Government of Colombia. In a country as big as France and Spain combined, highly mountainous areas dangerously curved most of Colombia’s roads and reduced many to just one lane. Another problem was the road design and the quality of construction materials and maintenance, which made numerous roads unsafe... — blog.wb.org/blogs