Now the Belgian capital's regional parliament has been told that repairs are being held up because original construction plans have apparently eaten by rodents. Brussels officials have reportedly blamed " mice " for their inability to tackle chronic traffic jams, saying hungry rodents probably ate the original plans to improve underground tunnels in the Belgian capital.
– Decaying road tunnels have left Brussels in a perpetual state of traffic chaos, but repairs are apparently on hold due to what CityLab deems possibly "the world's worst excuse for poor infrastructure": hungry rodents. Because the transportation department was housed 25 years ago in a hotel (apparently when the responsibility for the roads passed from federal hands into local ones) and didn't have a lot of space, the original construction blueprints for some of the city's major tunnels were instead filed away in the pillars under a highway bridge, Reuters reports. Apparently the four-legged creatures got to them before their two-legged counterparts. The Telegraph reports the plans were stored in that less-than-ideal location for two decades, and were moved to a typical storage facility in 2010. But by then "they were apparently eaten by mice," the ex-chief of Brussels' infrastructure department informed city officials on Wednesday. (Well, they do say city mice are smarter than country mice.)