28 ms·

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

154 points by gadders 8y ago

baybal2 8y ago
Big thing to not: it not only links Zhuhai and HK, but also Zhuhai and Shenzhen through land transit over HK territory
- strayamaaate 8y ago
  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.
  - dividuum 8y ago
    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.
baybal2 8y ago
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_Bridge 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.
- maeln 8y ago
  Honest question: why would the government try to drive economic influence away from Shenzhen ?
  - Balero 8y ago
    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.
  - Hasknewbie 8y ago
    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.
- Balero 8y ago
  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?
- csomar 8y ago
  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.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pwaivers 8y ago
Despite the criticisms, this is pretty awe-inspiring. I wish the US had big construction projects like this also.
- josefresco 8y ago
  You mean like the 'Big Dig'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-facts-and-figures https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-facts-and-figu...
  - jhpankow 8y ago
    Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
    - schnevets 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pontchartrain_Causeway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pontchartrain_Causeway is still the longest continuous bridge
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    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.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      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.
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
pwaivers 8y ago
> 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.
- pcr0 8y ago
  Car ownership in Hong Kong, and even the rest of the bay area is relatively low. Lot of it is probably buses.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    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/@22.2109847,113.5819902,399m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en 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.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  In America you would find a hard time justifying anything other than just a two lane road with this low level of traffic.
- nemo846 8y ago
  Heh. First ghost cities. Now ghost bridge.
fouronnes 8y ago
> 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.
- galago 8y ago
  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.
djsumdog 8y ago
No rail link? Only private transport? Seriously? Why put that much effort into a structure that can only move cars and buses?
- kccqzy 8y ago
  Because a rail link already exists.
  - ausjke 8y ago
    along with the bridge?
    - fspeech 8y ago
      Hongkong has land border with China and rail links over land.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    Could you tell us more? Where? Since when? How long is it? How well does it work? How much traffic?
  - jpatokal 8y ago
    Not to Macau it doesn't, and getting to Zhuhai involves going around the entire bay.
- romed 8y ago
  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.
  - te_chris 8y ago
    Autocracy
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    There are two places where "the biggest" trumps all notion of practicality: china and dubai. This is about "national pride", aka freud.
js2 8y ago
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%93Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge%E2%80%93...
- draw_down 8y ago
  I grew up near that area and always found the drives over that bridge unsettling.
- vinay427 8y ago
  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!
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    The mountain pass is a lot more fun though!
    - singingboyo 8y ago
      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.
cromwellian 8y ago
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.
- akfanta 8y ago
  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.
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    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.
emptybits 8y ago
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]
- azinman2 8y ago
  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.
  - hanoz 8y ago
    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?
ghobs91 8y ago
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.
- cft 8y ago
  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.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    What do Swiss tunnels have to do with Chinese bridges? And are you talking about unemployed people? How is that connected?
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > 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?
    - Arnt 8y ago
      One branch of government pays for building roads, another pays for their maintenance.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    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.
  - michaelcampbell 8y ago
    How much underwater?
  - 8y ago
the_clarence 8y ago
"at least 18 workers have died building this bridge"
- isostatic 8y ago
  9 died during construction of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland. Construction - especially large scale civil engineering, is dangerous.
larrysalibra 8y ago
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 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-troubled-mega-bridge-counting-human-environmental-financial-cost/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/23/explainer-hong-kongs-t...
- jorblumesea 8y ago
  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.
  - skwirl 8y ago
    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.
pkaye 8y ago
> 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.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> 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?
NicoJuicy 8y ago
> 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...
profalseidol 8y ago
This article feels salty and jealous.
sbhavani 8y ago
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

154 points by gadders 8y ago

baybal2 8y ago

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

strayamaaate 8y ago
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.
- dividuum 8y ago
  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.

baybal2 8y ago

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_Bridge 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.

maeln 8y ago
Honest question: why would the government try to drive economic influence away from Shenzhen ?
- Balero 8y ago
  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.
- Hasknewbie 8y ago
  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.
Balero 8y ago
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?
csomar 8y ago
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.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pwaivers 8y ago

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

josefresco 8y ago
You mean like the 'Big Dig'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-facts-and-figures https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-facts-and-figu...
- jhpankow 8y ago
  Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
  - schnevets 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pontchartrain_Causeway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pontchartrain_Causeway is still the longest continuous bridge
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  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.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    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.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago

pwaivers 8y ago

> 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.

pcr0 8y ago
Car ownership in Hong Kong, and even the rest of the bay area is relatively low. Lot of it is probably buses.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  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/@22.2109847,113.5819902,399m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en 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.
bobthepanda 8y ago
In America you would find a hard time justifying anything other than just a two lane road with this low level of traffic.
nemo846 8y ago
Heh. First ghost cities. Now ghost bridge.

fouronnes 8y ago

> 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.

galago 8y ago
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.

djsumdog 8y ago

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

kccqzy 8y ago
Because a rail link already exists.
- ausjke 8y ago
  along with the bridge?
  - fspeech 8y ago
    Hongkong has land border with China and rail links over land.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  Could you tell us more? Where? Since when? How long is it? How well does it work? How much traffic?
- jpatokal 8y ago
  Not to Macau it doesn't, and getting to Zhuhai involves going around the entire bay.
romed 8y ago
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.
- te_chris 8y ago
  Autocracy
- sandworm101 8y ago
  There are two places where "the biggest" trumps all notion of practicality: china and dubai. This is about "national pride", aka freud.

js2 8y ago

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

draw_down 8y ago
I grew up near that area and always found the drives over that bridge unsettling.
vinay427 8y ago
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!
- jacquesm 8y ago
  The mountain pass is a lot more fun though!
  - singingboyo 8y ago
    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.

cromwellian 8y ago

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.

akfanta 8y ago
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.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  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.

emptybits 8y ago

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]

azinman2 8y ago
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.
- hanoz 8y ago
  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?

ghobs91 8y ago

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.

cft 8y ago
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.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  What do Swiss tunnels have to do with Chinese bridges? And are you talking about unemployed people? How is that connected?
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > 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?
  - Arnt 8y ago
    One branch of government pays for building roads, another pays for their maintenance.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  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.
- michaelcampbell 8y ago
  How much underwater?
- 8y ago

the_clarence 8y ago

"at least 18 workers have died building this bridge"

isostatic 8y ago
9 died during construction of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland. Construction - especially large scale civil engineering, is dangerous.

larrysalibra 8y ago

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 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-troubled-mega-bridge-counting-human-environmental-financial-cost/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/23/explainer-hong-kongs-t...

jorblumesea 8y ago
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.
- skwirl 8y ago
  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.

pkaye 8y ago

> 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.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> 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?

NicoJuicy 8y ago

> 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...

profalseidol 8y ago

This article feels salty and jealous.

sbhavani 8y ago

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