“This one found the highway was viable, according to the government. But this study has never been made public and attempts by Reuters to see it were unsuccessful.”
This always seems to happen when you get SHIFTY projects like this, and certainly the same for the vaunted “Public Private Partnerships”, which is also mentioned in this article.
Just HANG UP THIS CRAP and shine light on the projects. There are plenty of well-qualified road planners and they can tell tell you, pretty damn accurately, whether the plan is a white elephant. And, as the article states, that was the case here - but this secret little study (and lots of bribes, no doubt) is what they relied on.
Yes, you can imagine, that not many people want to actually drive the switchbacking roads of Montenegro — I assume a lot of switchbacks, the way the article describes them — so there would not be a lot of drivers around to use the new highway and pay the tolls. Many, if not most, people there probably walk to local shops and workplaces or take the train.
Simply improving the roads and digging a few tunnels to avoid dangerous stretches would probably be better for a population roughly 1/10 that of the state of Maryland.