https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/load-testing...
The margin on actual load to a permanent set is likely 2-3x what those trucks are carrying. And the margin to actual failure from just this quasi static loading and no external environmental loads (wind)... even more so.
Unless there was some catastrophic fuck up in construction process or calculations, this is completely safe.
https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/u3dqja/how...
Wikipedia indicates it is meant to increase tourism, but even China's most attractive regions (Beijing, Shanghai, Great Wall, Chengdu, Chongqing) are under-visited. I can't imagine that Guizhou will be on foreign tourist's agenda for at least a couple of decades. I think this is an attempt by the local govt. to get more internal tourism. It might work out. We'll see.
Think of it this way.
Every 2 hours round trip to 2 minutes saves imported fossil. For trucking/freight that's like ~$80 of diesel both ways.
PRC construction workers, though less abundant is cheaper than it ever will be. So best time to build infra is always now, especially one that reduces long tail imports.
Every piece of infra that cuts time (apart from cutting X time) is basically frontloading (domestic) steel and concrete to reduce future oil imports (and emissions). Rough napkin math, 2B rmb construction cossts = ~3m barrels of oil, 2b kms of travel. Shaving off 2hrs (guestimate ~150km) and it pays itself off in imported fuel metric between ~10m trips (for freight , more for passenger). Guizhou has 40m people, if a fraction goes to see the bridge, do some tourist shit (induced demand) it would go a long way to basically subsidize a bridge that cut logistics times and wear on tear for the region.
Like planting trees, now is the second best time to build infrastructure. The best time is a decade or two or more ago.
What about maintenance costs?
Its like if you put a dimensional portal across a Great Lake, even if neither side of the portal is currently not very prosperous, the fact that hours of ferry turned into minutes of travel would be a huge boon to both sides and gather attention, investments, and economic benefits that could turn both sides into prosperous cities.
We don't need an economic angle to build great things that help people.
It's a bridge, it's meant to be a shortcut from point A to B.
We aren't just cogwheels in an economic system, there's more to life and progress as humans.
This kind of thinking is exactly how people go bankrupt. "But I deserve those shoes" "I need a Starbucks to get the day started" "This McMansion would make me happy" "I'd rather commute in a BMW than a Toyota"
Look at Schenzen in the 70s... If you want your country to move forward you need infrastructure, otherwise poor parts stay poor
American mindset
I mean... that's exactly the reason?
Government funds get used to improve poorer regions to spread development. Improving transport links is a good way to do that
Plus it connects the country, which helps long-term stability
Think of these as more of interstate highways kind of projects
Could be part of a bit of internal “not leaving anyone behind” propaganda, rather than a concern for national or international trade.
Less cynically, it could be a genuine attempt to help pull the area up economically. Lack of good transport infrastructure can be a major factor among those that hold areas back in that regard.
Nations, companies, etc., build these things to "show off." It's nothing new, the Babylonians, Sumerians, and Egyptians did it.
If you want to uplift a region, you invest into it. A bridge that cuts travel time by 2 hours increases domestic trade, it can even increase domestic and international tourism long term.
Say what you want but the only region in the world I went that felt like looking forward is Asia, even borderline decaying countries like Japan are clearly looking forward, you can see it from what and how they build, and not just in major centers.
It spoke to me so strongly, that I immigrated and started my first business. Not to China, but nearby (Viet Nam). It was a very tough road, I never ended up particularly wealthy, but I have no regrets.
The US or Mexico could build a bridge over the deeper bits of their national canyons and hold the undisputed crown, but won't.
Seriously, when's the last time we built something like this. The only initiative I can even think of is California high speed rail and that project just so happens to be a testament to the absolute antithesis of what I'm proclaiming.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Point_Floating_Bri... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_V._Murrow_Memorial_Bri... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_M._Hadley_Memorial_Bri...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penobscot_Narrows_Bridge_and...
One end has an observation deck, built just for fun! It’s on the slower, non I-95 route up through Maine to Bar Harbor / Acadia National Park.
But perhaps more importantly, getting insights into how the government building things gives the people who can grant contracts tremendous political leverage and power. It is remarkable to see that what he built was definitely good for New Yorkers (although as the book points out, really for rich and white New Yorkers) and the distortions they caused in the political machine caused some people serious grief from loss of property to loss of their entire livelihood.
Authoritarian systems can operate like that but it comes at a tremendous cost.
I’m still grateful at a personal level to live in a democracy, but I’m not as certain as I used to be that it’s the only way to run a country that benefits the people.
The infrastructure is incredible yes, but the complete lack of fear on the streets, and the positive consequences of that, are something to behold. Women are not afraid to walk home alone at 2am. People young and old dance together in the street. You never feel on your guard, at all.
They haven’t completely eradicated poverty, but they seem to be giving it a real go. In one very rural area I saw an elderly couple living in a rundown shack, but they had a bunch of modern medical equipment, provided to them for free by the state.
Easy to check: look up Wikipedia's "List of highest bridges", and sort by date.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_bridges#Comple...
More interestingly, to me at least, is the fact that 31 of the longest 50 are all in China (as are all but two of the 24 in the "under construction or planned").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_suspension_bri...
> The 2,890-metre-long structure, which took more than three years to complete, reduces travel time between the two sides of the canyon from two hours to two minutes.
Pretty impressive. I feel like things in the US take a lot longer and cost a lot more. The prime example is the second avenue subway extension which has been planned since 1920. But I just searched for a few significant bridges like the Gordie Howe bridge which took about 7 years and 6.4bn Canadian (connects US and Canada). And this bridge which seems a lot more of an engineering feat took 3 years and 8 months and cost between $280 to $292 million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordie_Howe_International_Brid...
https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/3553875/the-new-tallest-...
In the West, and especially in the US, individuals and orgs don't get practice, so when they finally do get a new contract they have to stumble around for 5-10 years figuring out all the institutional knowledge that was lost.
By the time they figure it out, the project is over budget, so it gets canceled, and then it's 20 years until the next half-hearted attempt. Lather rinse repeat.
At root, a lot of this stems from a "managerial" mindset in which people and skills can simply be "reallocated" on a dime. They can't. You can't uproot trees all the time. You plant one and then it grows over multiple human lifetimes.
The construction timeline and travel improvement are comparable to the New River Gorge bridge, which was completed in the US in ~50yr ago back when systems were structured to and the people who ran them actually were capable of producing results.
Places like China, for better or worse, are not burdened with the problem of making sure every constituency is accommodated.
I understand what you're saying, but the experience is quite different for the people driving over it compared to a bridge where it isn't a 2000 foot drop.
I'd be more interested to know how they raised individual components into place. But I presume they just started with small cables, then used those to raise larger ones into place over time.
All I'm seeing is fairly straightforward fact-based announcements. "The tallest bridge has opened - here it is." If that doesn't interest you, fine... but the reports are not hyperbole.
This project is beautiful. This is an incredible work of art. It might not be the longest, but have you ever tried to pull cable over 2,000 ft hole? Have you ever seen what it takes to actually do those columns? The work looks nice very nice design. It fits with the landscape very well. And the fact that it cost only 140 million is an incredible. For a comparison if you look up one of the bridges I did. We spent 280 million on this We spent 280 million on this
I-91 Brattleboro Bridge | FIGG Bridge Group https://share.google/LKxgk1aEWh9gSIGhD
In modern times, that translates to paying people to build roads and bridges. Why pay people to sit on their butts and eat bon-bons when you can pay them to get something of value?
In more tangible terms, building infrastructure does elevate peoples' situations.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/world%E2%80%99s-tallest...
There will be a place for people to run on a track on the outside (with an above harness), bungee jumping, misting rainbow effect sprayers, and visitor's areas underneath and in the top of one of the towers.
The team of engineers who developed this are also quite young.
Now, the US is focused on other stuff like maybe having some return on their investment, or looking at its people as first-class problems rather than ants meant for a greater national goal. It's not that bad, it depends on what you focus on, I think people in the US have nice stuff to look forward to, like I don't know, a holiday in Disneyland with their kids, when Chinese people often don't see our kids for years while we're building bridges far away.
Plus you know, we don't get to vote for great politicians like in the US and are stuck instead with bureaucrats that care more about infrastructure than pleasing the people. Be proud of that, I'd love for us to have your president (yes, I'm teasing you :p)
Probably not for most Americans these days:
When China starts capturing and colonizing other continents, you can start being really jealous !
/s
China is doing a lot of drilling, based on what I've seen first-hand.
China's infrastructure building is beyond impressive. I always come back to this map of China's high speed rail built in 16 years (2008-2024) [1].
China is actually run by a meritocratic bureaucracy rather than the dumbest of people who do nothing more than sell pardons, run crypto scams, transfer government funds to the wealthiest of people, pander to religious hallucinations and sell out their constituents for board seats and jobs after their political career from the very billionaires that were buying them in office. And no, it's not just one party that does this although the current administration is particularly egregious.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/highspeedrail/comments/1drmc2v/grow...
Noone has yet compared the Chinese construction times/costs to the replacement Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge: cost ~$2b, estimated October 2028. Will have 600ft bridge towers, 1600ft main span (increased from 1209ft), total span length 3300 ft, improved pier protection. Surprised they didn't add a freight rail link.
There's some very heavy lifting you have to do to make the parties look at all close. If the Democrats had a supermajority for long enough, you would see some real change for the better, because we can actually protest Democrats to get them to do things, while the Republicans will just silence any dissent using US military against its citizens. Unfortunately a Democratic supermajority is unlikely to ever happen again the way things are going now. And this is 100% because how people voted, or didn't vote at all.
The Democratic Party is absolutely complicit in everything going on. The term used is "controlled opposition". With the current government shutdown, I think it's taken the Republicans by surprise that the Democrats have (thus far) actually stood up for something and they really don't know what to do because it so rarely happens.
Like why wasn't this happening with the last debt ceiling increase earlier this year? Particularly because there was a fairly awful amendment in the last CR that ended Congress's ability to end the state of emergency the president could declare to use extraordinary powers. That seems like worth standing up to.
Go back to 2012 or so when Bush's tax cuts were expiring. Harry Reid had the Senate Republicans over a barrel until... Joe Biden got involved and just capitulated for absolutely no reason. And got nothing in return.
The last Senate supermarjority was in Obama's first term. It was fairly brief actually (less than a month) due to people taking sick and Republicans using a frivolous court case to stop Al Franken taking his seat. But there still was one.
Obama's signature legislative accomplishment was the ACA and what did it do? It was a massive giveaway to insurance companies. There was even a proposal to allow people to enrol in Medicare at 55 (instead of 65) which was derailed by Joe Lieberman. Why? United Health Care was an employer in his state (Connecticut).
But here's the dirty little secret. Democrats love nothing more than using the filibuster as an excuse to do nothing. If that fails, use "institutionalism". The filibuster is not a constitutional construct. It is part of the rules of the Senate. Originally you had to stand up and speak for so many hours to filibuster. Now you just raise your hand and say "filibuster".
If you have a majority in the House and Senate and a president in the White House, you can pass whatever you want.
And let's not forget we just had an election cycle where the Democratic Party openly and intentionally chose to materially support a genocide (that they could've stopped at any point with a phone call) rather than win an election at a time they were (rightly) calling their opponent a fascist.
Not an American btw.
The irony is they are doing all that on the name of “meritocracy” and their side (the wrong Right) is falling for it and cheering it with both hands :-)
> Last month, a team of engineers deployed 96 trucks to strategic points across the bridge to recreate heavy traffic conditions to ensure it would not buckle.
Reminds me of this https://featureassets.gocomics.com/assets/74c15210deb9013171...
Implying they were not sure it would not buckle, until they drove the trucks on.
On the other hand...we won the space race and we went to the moon, except only 15 guys or thereabout went and for the rest of us didn't mean anything substantial at all.
Illusions, bombs and coups...
And reality always wins over illusions in the end. China will show that with great joy to the people of the world.
There are two United States. A prosperous nation and a struggling nation. See both.
I’m from a now depressed rural town. When I periodically drive home it gets a little more ramshackle every year. My town had 20 operating dairy farms, now 0. Three industrial facilities, now one, which is now fully automated and employs security guards and guys to load trucks.
The best jobs are police, teachers and logistics people at a nearby distribution center.
I pay my entry engineers in real terms 15% less than I made 30 years ago. Housing is about 30% higher in real terms. Our benefit overhead grows 2x inflation.
Then travel abroad.
What a spectacular scene.
I am proud on behalf of all the people who worked together to achieve this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire
https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_bridges vs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_bridges