PHUKET: The Patong Tunnel, the most important engineering project for Phuket in terms of moving people from one side of the island to the other, is unlikely to ever be built.

The Roads Department tried late last week to find a solution to allow the six-billion baht project to proceed. But the department's experts returned to Bangkok with their idea deemed to be unworkable.

For years, the local community at the spot in the foothills of Patong where the tunnel would emerge have passively resisted the idea of them being forced to move out to make way for the development.

So on Friday, Roads Department engineers suggested a logical alternative: build the roadbridge that will emerge from the tunnel over Patong's existing canal.

The notion of building above canals is what gave Bangkok its vast network of freeways, so the idea contained common sense for Patong and its tunnel.

There was just one small problem, Patong Mayor Chalermlak Kebsub told the engineers. Patong no longer has a canal in that position.

It's believed the Roads Department must have been using a map created before the modern development in Patong, or perhaps one that deliberately overlooked more recent encroachments.

Mayor Chalermlak said today that the canal had long since disappeared.

''Our major duct for carrying water away from the spot where the tunnel would emerge is a ditch just 1.5 metres wide,'' she said. ''We don't have a place for the tunnel to emerge yet.''

With the cost of property in Patong continuing to rise, compulsory purchase of the land required for the tunnel exit is becoming more expensive - even if the hillside communities wanted to move.

The most impressive irony of all is that the man who was the greatest advocate of the tunnel, the late Patong Mayor Pian Keesin, is also the man who was in charge during encroachment on the canal where the tunnel's exit could have once been built.