By the look it, it’s like that bridge that joins Scandinavia to Scandinavia, with big long viaducts, a tunnel, island where the viaducts turn into tunnels, a in among it all. a tiny – but actually very big – bridge, of the sort that does the entire job in a place like little old England. Only, this bridge connects Hong Kong to China. (Or, as I now like to think of it, West Taiwan.) So, it’s bigger. The biggest.
There have been the inevitable complaints that it cost too much, in lives as well as money. But this is not just a bridge for business. When transport infrastructure gets built on this scale, in a place like China now, there are militaristic as well as business reasons for it to get finished. Money, in other words, is not that much of an object. Nor is the odd life or twenty.
I prefer Renzo Piano’s new bridge in Genoa, built recently to replace the one that fell down:
I liked the design of this bridge when I first saw it, and I like it now.
Maybe I’m becoming too pessimistic about the state of the world just now, but will that Hong Kong bridge be the last of the big bridges for a while? And will most bridges from now on, and for a while, just be replacements for bridges that need replacing, like that one in Genoa?