The current woes in Nanakuli are just typical of our public road-building enterprises, aren't they?

To name a few examples: There is that Windward leg of the H-3 interstate freeway that languished for decades while fights over the larger project raged. Then there is the Hale'iwa bypass road, which stopped short of bypassing anything for years.

Now we have the Nanakuli Stream "Bridge to Nowhere," a $2 million white elephant. This product of a halting government road development offers the long-suffering Wai'anae driver a half-mile stretch that goes ... into the parking lot of the Nanakuli Beach Park.

It's a real boondoggle: an expensive boon for skateboarders, a dog for passersby unable to see past its gray hulk and glimpse the ocean.

The bridge is part of the perennially stalled city project to establish an emergency route using largely county rights-of-way for Wai'anae Coast commuters. This route would serve in the event — and these events happen all too frequently — that Farrington Highway is blocked.

The community roared its approval of the concept when the city trotted it out, and it is indeed a service that's greatly needed.

Unfortunately, that ugly bridge is just about the only element that's become reality.

Some problems could not have been anticipated. At the route's opposite end, progress has been hobbled by conflict over burials and historic sites in the Makaha area.

Some of them stemmed from overlapping jurisdictions of government, and it's hard to understand why such knots couldn't have been untangled before the bridge construction proceeded. For example, the city bridge is located illogically on the makai side of the highway to avoid running through state-controlled Hawaiian Homestead land on the mauka side.

And there is now entanglement with the new owners of one segment of the route, on Pa'akea Road, owners who were hesitant to grant emergency use of the road.

What the taxpayers are witnessing now (in addition to the ugly bridge) is a flurry of pointing fingers assigning blame.

What they need instead is a collaborative effort by the city and the state to overcome the roadblocks — and yes, the state has a stake in this, too, because its highway is the one that is frequently impassable.

Some portion of this emergency route has got to be made usable. Otherwise, the Bridge to Nowhere will stand as a reminder of government's impotency to fulfill its basic functions.