World's longest sea crossing: Hong Kong-Zhuhai bridge opens | Hacker News Reader

World's longest sea crossing: Hong Kong-Zhuhai bridge opens

bbc.co.uk

154 pointsgadders135 comments

The bridge, while very interesting as a large infrastructure project is laughably useless for many stakeholders.

Own a car in Hong Kong and want to drive across it to Macau? You need to get vehicle registration plates (some "electronic" or temporary) in 3 jurisdictions. You also need insurance for 3 jursidictions. Also, you can only drive to a parking lot outside of Macau and then transfer to public transit to enter the city. And you need to register for a parking space 12 hours before your trip. Watch this hilarious HK government video on the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO3bNlB9j9o

But you don't own a car! Like most Hong Kongers, you take public transit. Surely this bridge will make it faster than the 1 hour ferry ride that leaves from 2 ferry piers in the middle of the city every 15 minutes or so all day and night. Unfortunately this isn't the case. The buses across the bridge from Hong Kong leave from the airport and take 40 minutes. You'll have to take another bus from the airport to the city at the cost of another 45 to 60 minutes.

This is a political project to show that Hong Kong and Macau are being integrated into China.

As political projects go, this certainly isn't the worst of them. It's better than the other things governments do to bolster domestic support like wars or locking up people you don't like. At least we'll all get to have a fun day trying out the bridge and something for tourists to take pictures of as they land in Hong Kong and Macau.

Perhaps in the future policies will change and it will become easy to us the bridge as a normal bridge.

If you're interested in learning more, here's a great article with more background: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/23/explainer-hong-kongs-t...

It's not about people leaving hong kong/macau, but going the other way. It's for the Chinese to roll in tanks and troops in the event of an insurrection. The border routes are circuitous and easily blocked, this route is easily controllable and can be secured with little manpower.

This is a bizarre claim to make. This route would be much easier to block than any land route - it's a single bridge disappearing into a tunnel shortly off the coast of Hong Kong. It is about as easy of a choke point to block as you can get. The bridge the island goes to also only has a single bridge leading off it into the rest of Hong Kong.

It's a single bridge, going over water and underground, into an area that requires blue water presence. Choke points work both ways, easy to choke but also easy to secure. The permanent garrison of PLA in Hong Kong would be able to secure the HK side of the bridge long enough for reinforcements to get through.

China's biggest worry in this area is civil unrest, not hostile foreign powers and most of the bridge is inaccessible to potential rioters or dissidents. It's a huge game changer for the region, allowing China to move initial response troops into the area much faster. (30 min vs 4 hours)

Right, who has even heard of amphibious landing ships. Not like they need them in any case, since they happen to have the fastest amphibian armored vehicle in the world.

But you are either trolling here or way too deep into conspiracy theories to care for facts.

Expensive, and looks like a military invasion to the outside world as compared to moving troops over a bridge. China isn't stupid, they built this bridge for a very good strategic reason.

I would have greatly appreciated this bridge being open when I stayed in Macau for a few days and had to fly home out of Hong Kong. There was a lot of overhead time with the ferry -- even with the Skypier transfer (and ferries to the airport do not run every 15 minutes). We left our hotel at noon for a 6:15pm flight.

So it's essentially a bridge to the nearest international airport from Macau?

Not even that: Macau has its own international airport. While Asian destinations are well covered, you need to go to HKG for long-hauls though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macau_International_Airport#Ai...

>You need to get vehicle registration plates (some "electronic" or temporary) in 3 jurisdictions. You also need insurance for 3 jursidictions.

well, the bridge does put a political pressure on that situation. One China in all senses would make it more convenient.

Until that, the Uber Roaming with autonomous cars, one is taking you to the border, the another is already waiting to pick you up, a convergence of taxi and rental, will solve that issue in the meantime.

> Until that, the Uber Roaming with autonomous cars, one is taking you to the border, the another is already waiting to pick you up, a convergence of taxi and rental, will solve that issue in the meantime.

I highly doubt that 'in the meantime' includes the present. Autonomous cars are science fiction, not fact.

This bridge actually seems like a reasonable place to put self-driving cars. It's a closed road with no intersections, just get in a car on one side, and jump off at the other. Just like a bus, but private and on demand.

I'm sure that the current generation of self driving technology could handle that fairly well.

Most ppl will take the bus across. Also the goods will be shipped through this route for faster deliveries.

Why take a private bus over a private ferry?

Busses leaves more often and starts, stops and travel much faster than ferry.

Do they? From the original reply:

>Surely this bridge will make it faster than the 1 hour ferry ride that leaves from 2 ferry piers in the middle of the city every 15 minutes or so all day and night. Unfortunately this isn't the case. The buses across the bridge from Hong Kong leave from the airport and take 40 minutes. You'll have to take another bus from the airport to the city at the cost of another 45 to 60 minutes.

The article itself says "Ferries usually depart every one to two hours."

If you are going to the HK airport from the Shekou port in mainland China, the ferry requires you to arrive something like 3 hours ahead of your flight, even though the ferry ride itself if only 30-40 minutes. I assume a bus wouldn't dictate your schedule in that way.

Aren't buses much cheaper to operate then ferries?

Maybe if you exclude the $10b cost of building the bridge...

That video is simply amazing. How it's not a parody is beyond me.

Cheery voice: "It's so simple and convenient!"

... while a graphical representation pops up of three government authorities in three jurisdictions together with a three-step application process that takes only 12 business days to process, after which you need to purchase the required insurance from each of the three jurisdictions... yup, crossing a bridge has never been simpler.

Not forgetting that of the two permits they send you, one expires after a year, the other after 3.

"It's so convenient!"

Good, it shouldn't be for private vehicles.

Why?

> The bridge, while very interesting as a large infrastructure project is laughably useless for many stakeholders.

Given the current situation you are probably right, but I'd assume the construction of the bridge is an indication that something around Macau's status or SARs in general is maybe about to change?

The article you linked says "Ferries usually depart every one to two hours."

You've said it yourself, for now Hong Kong is integrated into the motherland. Put a price on it. China thinks very long term

Insurance and registration reqs can be changed virtually with a signature.

FWIW, here on the East Coast of the U.S. we have the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. It’s 23 miles overall (17.6 miles shore to shore), two lanes each direction, and includes two tunnels of one mile each. The tunnels are part of the original construction and are only one lane each direction so traffic has to merge for the tunnels.

I cross the bridge twice a year. It’s a long way. The Zhuhai bridge at 11 miles longer and double the tunnel distance must be quite something. I think I might be a little nervous driving in a tunnel that length.

One thing I’ve noticed in the CBBT is that cars inevitably slow down on the upgrade out of the tunnel which is a hazard. I wonder if this will be a more significant hazard for the Zhuhai with the longer tunnel and more lanes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge%E2%80%93...

You may find the Gotthard road tunnel (Switzerland) interesting. It's also one lane each way and is a continuous 16.9km/10.5mi in length, though it's so well-lit and well-signed (as with virtually every tunnel in Switzerland, certainly compared to those in its neighboring countries) that it may not be very anxiety-inducing. It's probably far more comfortable than the mountain pass alternative!

The mountain pass is a lot more fun though!

Unfortunately, "fun" on a mountain pass tends to approach deadly, especially in winter time. I'm in BC - the Coquihalla is foggy already, and in midwinter it can and will be incredibly treacherous.

It's a gorgeous drive in good summer conditions, but I think people would handle boring and monotonous far better than the snow, or the fog where you can only see maybe 20m ahead.

I drove several times 25-km tunnel in Norway. It is the single tunnel for traffic in both directions with one line in each direction. It is not scary especially after driving through several older narrower tunnels before. The biggest problem is that it is very borring to drive through. To make driving less borring it contains 3 huge caves lit by light with different colors. It helps, but not much.

I used to regularly cross the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway [1] which was for many years the longest bridge in the world at 23.83 miles. It is a soul-crushingly boring drive and dangerous given how monotonous and narrow it is.

A friend used to have this interesting strategy for staying awake when crossing at night. There are two lanes going each way. He would straddle the pair and take up both lanes. That way, if he fell asleep and started drifting, the Botts' dots [2] on the centerline would wake him up as his wheels drifted over them. Probably not the smartest technique.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pontchartrain_Causeway

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botts%27_dots

I've driven across the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway a couple times. I didn't recall it was that long. I've also driven the overseas highway many times.

I don't know if there's any truth to it, but I've heard claims that the original Seven Mile Bridge which was built on railroad trestles and was therefor very narrow had fewer fatalities than the modern bridge that replaced it. The idea was that on the old narrow bridge, drivers obeyed the speed limit and paid much better attention than on the modern wider bridge which lulled drivers into being less careful.

I cross it a few times each week. It isn't too bad—you get across in about 20 minutes at 70mph (speed limit is 65), assuming you're not in rush-hour traffic or there isn't an accident closing one of the lanes. Except in the case of extreme weather, compared to the rest of the GNO, it's a pretty safe drive.

There's a crossover every 3-5 miles (7 in total) that's staffed with (very active) Causeway-specific police, which makes the story about the "Botts Dots" pretty unbelievable at any time of day.

Another thing, bridge's weird trajectory is reflecting decades long conflict of Shenzhen municipality's and economic planners in Beijing. For long, they tried to maximally deprive "Shenzhen upstarts" from economic benefit from them neighbouring Hongkong.

The bridge was more about diverting economic influence of HK's away from Shenzhen, than providing an economic benefit to HK.

Shenzhen's answer was building their own bridge to another bank of the delta with their own money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen%E2%80%93Zhongshan_Bri...

Once Shenzhen–Zhongshan bridge will be operational, it will completely jeopardise Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge economically.

On top of that, there is a persistent rumour that there is a political will to do a tunnel to Nei Lingding island, and add another connection to Zhuhai from there (so called revived Lingdingyang tunnel.) This is also the very reason why Beijing has declared the tiny Lingding island a "National Level" natural reserve, thus depriving Shenzhen's officials jurisdiction over it.

Honest question: why would the government try to drive economic influence away from Shenzhen ?

My, completely amateur, idea would be that, there are two major regions in China for centralised power. Beijing and Shanghai. Now with the massive growth in the Peal River Delta region, there is a base for a third major region. Currently it is not, because there is no one leader, you have Macau, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and a large number of other cities in the region.

If Shenzhen, and the people in charge there, are able to become the defacto leaders of the entire region, then you have another centralised regional base, away from Beijing. Which means less power in the central government.

One possible reason: Shenzhen is an economic behemoth that's also a new city (it was basically a fishing village until the 80s), which mean it has fewer 'old hands' there and is relatively free of corruption and socially more liberal (by Mainland standards). In other words, the Communist Party is less influential there than in other major urban centers. Under the reign of Uncle Xi this might be frowned upon.

I've never heard of this dynamic between the individual cities/regions and the central planners before. But it makes complete sense. Most of my reading on the Pearl River Delta is about re-integration Hong Kong and Macau.

Do you have any recommendations for further learning about it?

How would you explain the high speed train between Shenzhen and Hong Kong then? It was built recently and would make the two cities powerfully connected.

Isn’t the high speed rail network a nationwide initiative?

yes it's really access for HKG to the full Chinese HSR system - you can commute to Shenzhen, I'm told it's still a sl,owish process (only been open a month or so)

A good chunk of the travel time savings is mostly just shuffling the process around; rather than travel to the border Lo Wu and go through border checkpoint there, you do border clearance in West Kowloon.

People with electronic pass and CRH card can use the train as easy as riding a metro

Sadly as an APEC card holder I can get a Hong Kong e-pass attached to my passport (to enter Hong Kong), but not the equivalent for China

Tian gao, Huangdi yuan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian_gao,_Huangdi_yuan

Won't it get jeopardised in some way by the central goverment, if it's not to their liking?

Well, it was. They prohibited Guangdong provincial funds from being used in Zhongshan–Shenzhen bridge, that's why the city has to use its own money.

Lingdingyang being declared a national nature reserve was also all about sinking the previous Lingdingyang tunnel project.

Best to say, central planners and "upstart localities" are in "passive aggressive" relationships

Your responses give me the most interesting glimpse behind the curtain on how's the real life working in China I've ever had; super interesting, thanks a lot for this! :) I'll have to try to ask my parents in what ways it was similar or different in "communist" Poland. Though I think the situation may have been much more loose there then, from what I understand I think nobody really took the communism seriously in their hearts in there; at least after some point in history. But I may be totally wrong on this full well.

Guess this is one of the inefficiencies of China.

The central government has to spend resources / outright kneecap regions to keep them under their thumb.

Their mandate to rule seem wholly dependent on wealth.

China's going to have a hell of a time maintaining all this infrastructure they're building in a few decades. Maintaining things currently in use is a lot harder than building new, just ask the US.

Swiss maintain their road and tunnel infrastructure just fine. They have more tunnel miles per capita than the US. A lot depends on the fraction of value non-producing population that the value producing population has to appease.

What do Swiss tunnels have to do with Chinese bridges?

And are you talking about unemployed people? How is that connected?

> A lot depends on the fraction of value non-producing population that the value producing population has to appease.

What does that mean in practice? Something to do with taxes and income distribution? Also, where could I find research supporting it?

One branch of government pays for building roads, another pays for their maintenance.

It's not about "tunnels." It's about infrastructure as a whole.

The OP's statement is insightful. Narrowing its scope to prove a tangential point is not.

How much underwater?

> A lot depends on the fraction of value non-producing population that the value producing population has to appease

True, the idle rich have demanded appeasement in the form of lower taxes at the expense of many things - including infrastructure maintenance.

A point well-made!

Rent extraction, rent extraction everywhere!

I don't have stats to back it up, but it seems the US is the only developed country that is neglecting their infrastructure.

Don't generalize the problem to include the whole world when it only affects one country.

Oh don't worry, Europe is doing it too.

Indeed, wasn't there recently a bridge collapse in Italy due to neglect?

Travel more, and you'll see it happens in almost every nation.

this is me theroadchoseme.com

The railways in southern Sweden are an unreliable joke due to decades of neglect.

Fun fact: I've heard from a friend working in trains that the Norwegians are envious of how efficient we Swedes are in regards to trains. To them, we have struck the perfect balance of maintaining an OK railway in relation to the very few krona we spend.

I agree with you, it is a joke.

It's only a few months since a motorway literally collapsed in the middle of Genoa.

Has Russia stopped being a developed country, while I was away?

Plenty of Canadian cities have poor infrastructure, see: Montreal bridges.

This common self-hating American idea that only the US is doing it wrong is always funny.

The thing is that building in China is way cheaper than in the US, so for them it makes sense to just keep demolishing stuff and build new stuff. I saw it happening several times all over China. In Shanghai for instance, they are building a new Maglev station next to the old one, so there is no upgrading old stuff there.

In my experience from travelling through third world countries, they tend to build impressive projects, and then never maintain them and they fall apart.

I guess getting money for maintenance is politically harder, and saying "hey, we have this well maintained infrastructure" is much less impressive than "hey, we built this impressive new piece of infrastructure".

Vietnam seems particularly bad for it. They have some very nice new roads, but after a few years they're filled with potholes and an absolute pain to drive/ride through. It doesn't help that they aren't actually that well built either. They look nice when new, but there's actually very little under the tarmac, so when monsoon season comes through the roads just wash out.

Vietnam is a special kind of stupid (maybe not the right word, but best I can do). The whole country is filled with partially finished and failed projects (not just the roads), right next to brand new construction. I actually consider all of this part of the charm of living here. Makes for excellent urban exploration!

Becamex IDC is a company founded in 1976 to build a whole city north of Saigon in Binh Duong. There is nice wide and well-paved roads, sidewalks, schools, multiple golf courses, churches, car dealerships, hospitals, power plants... it is literally sim city in real life. The only twist is that it is still nearly empty. The only people out there are factory workers. The factories even import managers from Korea and Japan, who spend their days playing at the golf courses. The locals either live in factory housing or in really inexpensive places. There is whole communities of housing built up where only a few people live. It is kind of amazing really... the whole country is full of half finished places like this.

https://i.imgur.com/GIPMBmT.png

https://i.imgur.com/LRVIX7h.png

My guess is that when the sea levels rise and Saigon is under water, Binh Duong will be hot property... in 100 years.

> Maintaining things currently in use is a lot harder

Not so hard if the govn't simply crackdown Unions and worker protests.

And tolls for every new road.

No rail link? Only private transport? Seriously? Why put that much effort into a structure that can only move cars and buses?

Because a rail link already exists.

along with the bridge?

Hongkong has land border with China and rail links over land.

Could you tell us more? Where? Since when? How long is it? How well does it work? How much traffic?

Not to Macau it doesn't, and getting to Zhuhai involves going around the entire bay.

Only 9200 vehicles per day, that’s really small. The SF-Oakland bridge does a quarter million vehicles daily. I wonder how they can justify the cost for so little.

Autocracy

There are two places where "the biggest" trumps all notion of practicality: china and dubai. This is about "national pride", aka freud.

I wonder how they can justify the cost for so little.

It's a communist nation. They don't have to justify the cost. It's all about politics and boasting.

I imagine it will be a much higher share of commercial vehicles (busses and trucks) vs. the bay bridge that is largely a commuter bridge. Macau and Zhuhai are too far away for people to commute. And politically, Macau's population is too small to matter as a source of people who might work in HK, while the mainlanders in Zhuhai likely don't have appropriate immigration status to work in HK. (Yes, mainlanders need visas and permits to be in HK.)

On the other hand, their cost per mile is a third of the SF-Oakland bridge, meaning we could have had three bridges for the same price if we let Chinese build them.

The Bay Bridge happens to have twice as many lanes.

It's also in earthquake country.

And it was made in China!

> At $7.2 billion, it will be one of the most expensive structures ever built. But California officials estimate that they will save at least $400 million by having so much of the work done in China. …

> [Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company] put 3,000 employees to work on the project: steel-cutters, welders, polishers and engineers. The company built the main bridge tower, which was shipped in mid-2009, and a total of 28 bridge decks — the massive triangular steel structures that will serve as the roadway platform.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge....

Only 9200? You wish. The article says ”They later lowered their estimations after new transport networks were built in the region.”

This is geopolitics. It makes Hong Kong (more) a part of mainland China. That’s what justifies the cost for them.

There are shuttle buses, but you need to transfer at both ends:

https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/116531/how-do-i-u...

I agree that not having a rail link is absurd though, particularly given that both HK and Macau are incredibly dense and would be perfectly suited to one.

Despite the criticisms, this is pretty awe-inspiring. I wish the US had big construction projects like this also.

You mean like the 'Big Dig'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-facts-and-figu...

Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pontchartrain_Causeway is still the longest continuous bridge

Locals like to call it the "big handout." It was a boondoggle project that just showcased the fact that anyone whos connected can get a slice of the government spending pie. They should have just upgraded the central artery. There's a reason Boston is the goto example worldwide for why you don't put your highways underground.

Why? It seems to work pretty well compared to before.

Boston in general is a traffic nightmare, so I’m not sure how to measure success/failure.

>Why?

It cost a ton more than any other way of delivering a similiar result. Operating costs are higher than a raised highway because it's underground. The only pro is that a bunch of rich progressives who don't actually live in Boston get to pat themselves on the back about how the old eyesore of a raised highway that "divides the city" (or some mumbo jumbo like that) is gone. That's not enough to be worth the price. It was a boondoggle. They should have just rebuilt the raised highway.

Also the Chicago Deep Tunnel system is pretty massive

"Phase 1, the creation of 109.4 miles (176.1 km) of drainage tunnels ranging from 9 to 33 feet (2.7 to 10.1 m) in diameter, up to 350 feet (110 m) underground, was adopted in 1972, commenced in 1975, and completed and operational by 2006."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan

The US still has some great engineering projects happening, we just don't have the political climate to celebrate them, and to some extent have simply grown used to them/stopped seeing the wonder in them.

(A small, unusual benefit of being in a primarily civil engineering company is seeing a weekly email from a US manager celebrating all the cool projects around the world, but especially in the US, the company is contributing to.)

The World's Fair still exists, but maybe it has been far too long since the US has hosted one outside of Epcot's attempt to be a permanent one. Generating some fresh "gee whiz, engineering" excitement seems like a good idea this decade.

Care to share some interesting ones of these projects? Genuinely interested.

I suppose the easiest stuff to share is what's highlighted on the company's website. (Obvious disclaimer: my opinions on this site are my own, not my employer's. I don't speak for my employer. I do think my employer is involved in a lot of really interesting projects.)

Water projects are the closest to what I work on (though as a software developer my role is often indirect a bit from these projects), so ones I'm slightly more familiar with how much work and importance they have, simply from hearing coworkers talk about them (including the aforementioned manager's internal "Good News Friday" emails). Here are a few US Water project highlights from the company website:

https://www.stantec.com/en/projects/united-states-projects/s...

https://www.stantec.com/en/projects/united-states-projects/p...

https://www.stantec.com/en/projects/united-states-projects/c...

There are interesting sidebar links to more detailed articles there, and more projects if you explore further. The company is HQed in Edmonton, Alberta so you will find for obvious reasons there are also a lot of Canadian projects highlighted.

Basically need a dictatorship to pull this off. No environmental checks, no vetos or petitions. And, as correctly pointed out in another comment - building greenfield is one thing. Maintaining and expanding is a whole other ballgame. Just like refactoring a legacy code base which is in heavy production use.

Basically need a dictatorship to pull this off.

Not really:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Øresund_Bridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail

https://www.rt.com/business/353690-norway-underwater-floatin...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct

This idea that authoritarianism is a good way to get things done.... I’m seeing it suggested more and more. Is it true?

It makes sense on some level. But historically, is it actually true that dictators get more done?

Well, if you group monarchy into this, most of what we consider world wonders where created by those systems. Don't benefit the individuals, but make for spectacular tourist attractions. Great Wall, Pyramids, Cathedrals, ...

Isn’t something like a Toyota Corolla orders of magnitude more “wonder” than the pyramids?

Cathedrals though... I do kind of see there might be orders more more skilled labor embodies there?

A dictatorship is useful for quick taking of lands, hiding deaths of workers who are killed in construction projects, and manipulation of currency to make the projects cheaper.

> I wish the US had big construction projects like this also.

Big construction projects have big bills to pay, for both construction and maintenance. Do you also want to pay the bills?

I wish for construction projects that have big ROI. I prefer a small one to a big one if it produces the same value - just like in software.

   I wish the US had big construction projects like this also.

I wish the US was doing a better job of maintaining some of the infrastructure it's already built...

> Authorities initially estimated that 9,200 vehicles would cross the bridge every day.

This is... very few. Should they open it up to anyone that wants to use it? Otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose of connecting the cities.

Car ownership in Hong Kong, and even the rest of the bay area is relatively low. Lot of it is probably buses.

A look at a satellite view shows the bridge pretty much empty - maybe 3 trucks. And no backup at the 'customs house' on the end - totally empty lanes. Maybe it was a holiday or the weekend; but still.

https://www.google.com/maps/search/kong-zhuhai-macau+bridge/...

Oh! The HK end is still under construction in the picture. So its old. The trucks are probably bringing supplies for construction.

In America you would find a hard time justifying anything other than just a two lane road with this low level of traffic.

Heh. First ghost cities. Now ghost bridge.

Fascinating and creepy: The surveillance tech on the bridge attempts to detect sleepy drivers so "yawn three times and the authorities will be alerted". [OP]

That’s not the most efficient heuristic, however. The best predictor before people crash is a motion of one trying to keep their eyes open, basically with their face opening up.

Source: I know people working on automated machinery to detect this in pilots.

Even if yawning and face opening are predictors of a sleep crash, given that they are both methods people use to help keep themselves awake, does creating an environment where drivers feel they are not allowed to perform them actually lead to fewer accidents?

> it was built using 400,000 tonnes of steel, enough to build 60 Eiffel Towers.

Except the Eiffel Tower is made of iron, not steel.

I don't have a good source at the moment, but I think steel is somewhere around 97% iron by weight. The rest is carbon. Stainless steel has about 10% chromium.

> The bridge is not served by public transport, so private shuttle buses will ply the route. There is no rail link.

Why no rail link?

> Authorities initially estimated that 9,200 vehicles would cross the bridge every day.

I guess it will take a while to break even on the bridge costs.

Having made the ferry trip from HK to Zhuhai several times by ferry, I have to admit I'd take a more comfortable bus or shuttle limo ride any day. The advantage will be that now investors who do have the dual residency will be more willing to travel to Zhuhai which is lagging economically with it's neighbors

> Special cameras will be on the look-out for drivers on the bridge who show signs of getting sleepy, among other checks - yawn three times and the authorities will be alerted, local media report.

Now this is a little bit extreme...

Big thing to not: it not only links Zhuhai and HK, but also Zhuhai and Shenzhen through land transit over HK territory

This is actually a big deal. You can go right through Hong Kong and never leave Mainland jurisdiction.

Talk about showing who owns who.

There was a bit of moaning about it in HK, but it was off the front page news fairly quickly.

I've been trying to see how that works for 15 minutes now and the furthest I get is to Tuen Mun, which is still in Hong Kong. I'm probably missing something trivial.

This article feels salty and jealous.

"at least 18 workers have died building this bridge"

9 died during construction of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland. Construction - especially large scale civil engineering, is dangerous.

A skeptic in me makes me suspicious that there isn’t another function for such bridges: making it easier to roll tanks into HK if there’s an uprising one day.

I am sorry but your comment is dumb on so many levels. You do know HK is directly connected to mainland China, right? No bridge is needed if they want tanks over there.

I know, I’ve been to Hong Kong many times. Maybe you should take a look at the map, only part of Hong Kong is directly connected.

Of course, there’s tons of bridges already that can be used. But remember, one justification for the US national highway system was easy troop movement, My comment simply reflects on historical justifications of infrastructure having a military purpose.

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