Have you noticed how the landmark technological marvels are shifting one by one to the rising Super Power China? After longest rail lines and fastest rails it is now time for the longest bridge. This phenomenon is perhaps synonymous with a nations progress and development!
The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana, which had the title until December 27 of the last year, for its longest span, has now been dwarfed by three miles, by the new bridge that has a massive 26.4 miles span–five miles more than the distance between Dover and Calais. Expressing in another way, the Qingdao Haiwan Bridge is 174 times longer than the famous London’s Tower Bridge over the river Thames.
The Qingdao Haiwan Bridge, connects the main urban area of Qingdao city, which is in East China’s Shandong province, with Huangdao district, that lies in the Jiaozhou Bay sea areas. The bridge shortened the distance from Qingdao to Huangdao by 30 kilometer, and saved 20 minutes of travel time by car.
To finish the construction in record time, two separate groups of workers began building from two opposite ends, and the bridge was completed in four years, relatively short time for a project of this magnitude, and the cost was nearly $9 billion.
This massive bridge however is going to hold its record only for a few years, and it will be dwarfed by, probably you guessed it, another Chinese bridge. Last December Chinese officials announced that workers had begun constructing a bridge to link southern Guangdong province with Hong Kong and Macau and the work is expected to be completed by 2016. This new bridge would be 30 miles long.
A six-lane expressway on the bridge would further boost tourism, trade and professional services between main land China and Hong Kong. The bridge is designed to sustain earthquakes up to a magnitude of 8.0 in the Richter scale, and impact from a 300,000 tonne vessel.
This gargantuan bridge nonetheless will be dwarfed by another bridge which has the word 'grand' embedded in its name—Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, spanning an astonishing 102 miles, and this too would be in China.
Perhaps you noticed too, how the Republican governors are opposing Obama's fast rail projects, as waste of money? Obama's “new fast rails” of course would be slow moving locomotives when compared with Chinese rails!
America is broke, the only way our nation can survive is de-funding all social programs! If it were not for the welfare queens, America would still be prosperous—would she?
Wake up sheeple!
Article first published as The Bridge on the River Kwai—Actually Jiaozhou Bay on Technorati.
