I confirm some Reuters articles just disappear after opening the page. Been doing that since the new redesign, a few days ago. We are witnessing the slow death of Reuters.
It sounded very cheap, and then I looked up what these types of bridges normally cost, and now it sounds expensive. The former world's longest pedestrian bridge, the Charles Kuonen Suspension Bridge in Switzerland, cost 720k Francs - and that was built in the Alps, with Swiss labor costs (Switzerland has the highest minimum wage in the world.)
By contrast, the minimum wage in Portugal is the lowest in Western Europe by far, at 665 euros (!!!) per month.
It's not like this bridge was built in particularly inhospitable terrain or something - it ends less than 300 meters from a paved road. The Swiss bridge appears to be 1750 meters from the closest road.
The bridges are very similar lengths - 494m vs 516m - and similar construction.
You won't find any good builing workers at that price though. You're talking Switzerland, most of the construction work in Switzerland is foreign Portuguese workers. So the price in Portugal has to adjust slightly towards to Swiss prices if they want to hire any good people. Europe!
Well the other comments might be jumping to conclusions (which might have had an impact of course).
But the Portuguese bridge is over a river, this one is over a valley (though sure, the alps are a complication). They're also built slightly differently if you see the photos.
But yeah I think it's not only due to simple reasons.
Is it tho?
Or could it be the massive building boom in Portugal right now raising the prices?
Or the fact that kind of "alpine" construction is very rare in Portugal and probably required a lot of foreign expertise?
Or perhaps because there weren't many contractors biding on it, leading to a less competitive price?
Or maybe because they're totally different designs?
Or maybe there's a ton of factors you have no idea about and did no research on?
Corruption is really not as common in southern Europe as the media would make it out to be. Incompetence is a far bigger problem and also far harder to persecute, sadly.
To quote myself from a comment on high speed trains the other day “[The French] build high speed lines for between 1/5th and 1/20th of the cost of the one the UK is building. Just to prempt the France is flat and land is cheap arguments. 1/5th is the cost of the section of line between Lyon and Marseille that crosses the Massif Central with 50 tunnels and bridges and plenty of earthworks. The cost of land acquisition is only £8bn of the £100bn+ cost of HS2.” So if we conclude this kind of cost difference is corruption, we clearly have a much bigger problem in Britain.
Or could it perhaps just be that the requirements of the bridges are different? Things like oscillation tolerance, minimum width etc. Perhaps dictated by local laws and/or the kind of target public they want to attract, the average number of days a year the weather would permit transit etc etc ?
You are pretty much exactly describing how corruption works in a well regulated country. Since officials can't just pick the contractor but have to take the cheapest bid for the given requirements, they have to doctor the requirements until the contractor they want to hire has the best chance of making the best bid (or be the only contractor that effectively make a bid at all). This is exactly how it works from the lowest up to the highest level of government.
Since actual corruption is so hard to measure, we rank countries along a line of "corruption perception", i.e. how confident are people. Germany has an extremely good reputation. I believe you have to look at individual projects though and use a first principles approach: how much should it cost? What level of incompetence is believable vs plain corruption? Does the project make sense given larger government policy in the first place? Airport Berlin-Brandenburg, Wirecard, Nordstream are just the larger known cases, where corruption is the only possible explanation, there are tons of smaller projects as well, on which nobody bothers to put the spotlight.
It sounds like you are describing monopolies or regulatory capture. And sure enough, the US and Germany have some of the least competitive infrastructure construction markets.
The answer is corruption? Was that comment necessary? Do you have information that we don't have?
Also, it's not like corruption doesn't happen everywhere. For instance, not so long ago the Estonian government (that would be Northern Europe, I think) resigned because a corruption scandal (1).
A 110 foot (33.5m) long pedestrian bridge in Atlanta cost over USD$23 million. Part of the cost was to get it ready in time for the Super Bowl. Due to security concerns, it was cordoned off and no one was permitted to use it during the Super Bowl.
It does sound awfully cheap to me. For reference, if you ever been to Las Vegas and walked on those pedestrian bridges on the strip , the approximate price tag of those 15 years back was around $20 million.
They all have multiple elevators and escalators, are sturdy enough to handle hundreds of people simultaneously, and were constructed over some of the busiest roadways in the world. Not really apples to apples.
In comparison, a 300 meter utility pipes and pedestrian suspension bridge in Canada cost $12M CAD (approx €8M) a few years ago.
It was wider and stronger than this one to support the pipelines, and also required larger towers to support it on either end, which are surely a large part of the cost.
Doesn't sound too unrealistic. It's long but not very big. 1.2m in width. That does make quite a big difference in cost. So it's more of an walkway than proper bridge.
Yes and no. It's certainly something to think about when you have an 'interesting' design that pushes the limits somewhere, and pedestrian bridges often are have that sort of arty component. Or, you don't and it's embarrassing if there's a resonance in the 1-2 second range.
Most road bridges just aren't that interesting. They're a concrete slab on a girder, either steel or precast, depending on your local construction environment.
(As my bridge wasn't structurally terribly interesting in the end, the biggest issues were clearance with the railroad below while fitting into the height profile we needed for the surface, given the 100yr old elevated structure we were connecting to. That and the extremely low quality soils at the site)
I opened the comments specifically to see if anyone else thought the price was unrealistic.
I'd be surprised if that price would even cover the cost of materials.
Article says 1700lf and looks about 4ft wide, so that’s 6800ft of bridge deck. At $2.8M that would mean they spent $412/sf of deck. Where I live, the state DOT spends about $150/sf of bridge deck for traffic rated bridges. I’ve gotten prices for prefab ped bridges as low as $110 delivered (still have to pay a half-dozen guys for labor and the cost of a crane to place).
I guess there were some special construction challenges, but $415/sf is hardly a bargain for a bridge at first blush.
That may be low in some places where capital improvement costs are basically just graft.
My only guess would be since it's a suspenson bridge, maybe the length requires that type of bridge. I'm no bridgengineer though, and haven't looked up and compared the types.
It looks like the tradeoff is the angle/rise. The Kuonen bridge requires a 3,000 foot rise in elevation as you walk up it, so it has a sort of in-built tower on one end. The one in Portugal looks relatively flat in comparison.
Kind of sad that both of those bridges, as well as this new bridge, are all paid access. Walking on a bridge is one of those things you just take for granted as being free, I guess, until it isn't.
Thankfully, the former world's longest pedestrian bridge, the Charles Kuonen Suspension Bridge in Switzerland, is totally free.
It's not like these bridges are particularly expensive, either. The former longest in Switzerland cost only 720k euros to build, and that was constructed in the Alps by a Swiss company with expensive Swiss labor (I seem to recall they have the highest minimum wage in the world.) Seems like an excellent and cheap thing to build if you're a town looking to boost tourism.
On Alaskan Hiway they had see-through automobile bridges. Little uncomfortable to bicycle on, mostly because of damage on tires. https://youtu.be/pL2OtC_VLsU?t=1793
This type of bridge is (was for me) an effective way to get over fear of heights. I went on multiple long treks in Nepal in 2019 and you don't have a choice in crossing bridges like this, other than turning around and canceling your trip. The first bridges was absolutely horrible and at the end of the trip the bridges (or other more unsafe places, like narrow trails with big drops) didn't bother me at all.
Obligatory bridge collapse fact: there have been a few historical bridge collapses resulting from walking/stepping/marching which causes vibrations in the bridge that create a feed back loop further syncing the stepping intensifying the vibrations ultimately leading to the failure. Soldiers are supposed to break stride when crossing bridges to prevent collapse.
Some people have a fear of the heights of these bridges, I have an irrational fear of vibrational collapse.
I read the same claim on Usenet about 30 years ago and researched it. My conclusion was that soldiers break stride to avoid nasty oscillations, but I couldn't find any actual collapses. There was one bridge that was claimed as a collapse from people marching on it, but it was actually very high winds that caused the collapse.
Well, London's Millennium Bridge did not collapse, but it did sway alarmingly when crowds of people walking on it were forced into resonance, resulting in the immediate closure of the bridge before it could be fixed.
Apparently an incident took place in 1831 where a bridge collapsed under soldiers marching, but the Wikipedia article [1] notes that "The conclusion of the investigation was that the vibration caused by the marching precipitated the bolt's failure, but it would have failed eventually anyway".
There's more interesting information on synchronization and bridges on Veritasium's video, The Secret of Synchronization [2].
That video link about synchronisation is very interesting. Thankyou.
Synchronization of bridges, hearts, lightning bugs, metronomes, sailing clocks. Cool
In a documentary about London's Millennium Bridge, they showed videos of other bridges collapsing due to it. Sorry I don't have a link, just saying it's out there.
I feel like I remember that, but might be confusing it with another bridge incident. I remember there being elephants in the celebration, significant “waves” in the bridge and some pretty serious injuries...but again I may be confusing it with another incident.
Edit: watched video, GG flattened out. Not sure what I am remembering and maybe mixing up a few bridge “disasters” and collapses into one.
Investing in tourist infrastructure in natural parks to increase tourism revenue? Why wouldn't that work?
Take a look at Niagara Falls, for example - those viewing platforms and paths and boat launches aren't natural features. Making it easy to get access to spectacular views seems like a pretty good investment in general.
In this case, it does. Bridge toll is 12€ per person, and it's inserted into one of the most popular pedestrian course in Portugal (Passadiços do Paiva).
When you throw millions at something, there is always something that works. The question being, is it better than not taking this tax money at all so citizen could revitalize their economy themselves.
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/30/992456396/portugal-opens-worl...
Also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arouca_516