What's in the numbers?

There has been news recently about a probe into possible corruption by the SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., a substantial Canadian engineering firm, in connection with a World Bank funded bridge project in Bangladesh.

While the probe is now ongoing and the Canadian firm supposedly cooperating with the authorities – the possibility for corruption in a “mega” infrastructure project in Bangladesh is very certain.

When I first read about the probe, I recalled that I had heard that the Chinese had inaugurated a 26 kilometre bridge over the bay in one of their cities for HALF of what Bangladesh was paying for its 6 kilometre bridge!

The very idea seemed preposterous and at the brink of the credible... I mean, a 26 kilometre bridge! This needed a little digging to verify facts.

Facts revealed, however, I was wrong on a few counts, i.e. my facts were not entirely correct. The 'facts' as I had them made for good idle chat most certainly, but were too loose 'in fact' to be subjected to any real scrutiny or mature discourse.

Digging cleared some misconceptions, singularly that the sea bridge that the Chinese had inaugurated was not 26 kilometres, as I remembered it... but actually 26.4 MILES (or about 42 kilometres plus change).

What is fascinating about the length in particular is that it is slightly more than that of a full-length marathon!

The Qingdao Haiwan Bridge - 26.4 miles long - over a sea

The Qingdao Haiwan Bridge, which was completed and opened for use earlier this year, links the main urban area of Qingdao city, East China’s Shandong province, with Huangdao district, straddling the Jiaozhou Bay sea areas.

The other figure I got wrong was the bridge cost approximately US$8.9 billion and took four years to complete. Unless the Padma bridge price tag is almost US$17.8 billion – my other estimation about price comparison is equally off the mark (okay, completely off the charts!).

From what I now understand, the Padma bridge will stretch 6 kilometres – but not all of it will be over river. Additionally the Padma bridge in Bangladesh will cost an estimated US$2.9 billion – but then that is only just the amount the WB and its partners will finance. Chances are the bridge will cost the exchequer a little more since the development partners rightfully expect the government to chip in as well.

The Padma bridge - 4 miles - over land and a river

[What was interesting was that the bridge was originally supposed to cost US$1.5 billion when the feasibility studies were being completed in 2004/2005.]

So as we have it, the cost for 6 km bridge over a river is a third (if not more) of the cost of a 42 km bridge built over a sea. Now I know that while simple math would equate that a bridge 7 times shorter should cost at least 7 times less, but 1) it's never that simple, 2) all things are not equal, and 3) see 1.

Another thing I found out is that the Chinese bridge is now the world's longest road bridge – being three miles longer than the previous record-holder, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana, in America.

What's more, the colossal construction is set to hold the record as the longest sea bridge only for a few years – to be bettered by another Chinese bridge in the next decade.

Chinese officials announced last December that work has begun in the construction of a bridge to link southern Guangdong province with Hong Kong and Macau.

Set to be completed in 2016, officials say the US$10.4 billion bridge will span nearly 50km (30 miles) – amazingly the exact distance (in the southerly direction) between Bangladesh capital Dhaka and the Padma bridge!