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Rotterdam bridge to be dismantled for Oceanco's 127m sailing yacht Y721

MarkusWandel 5y ago
Mega rich guy gets special treatment. People are annoyed. The optics of this would be so easy to fix. Mega rich guy pays for revered landmark to be taken apart and put back together, but look, also pays for a new coat of paint. Everybody happy.
float4 5y ago
I'm Dutch. The way I see it, a 500 million dollar yacht is being built in my country, and in return we have to dismantle a bridge, that isn't even in use, for a single day and we don't have to pay for it. Although I find the super yacht industry rather disgusting, in this particular instance it sounds like a pretty good deal for Rotterdam honestly.
okokwhatever 5y ago
Demonstrate you're living more than X months in your yatch out of jurisdictional water.... profit!
- baud147258 5y ago
  well, not profit, but at least that should mean a few tax breaks. Though not sure you'd make a profit when taking into consideration the cost of the yatch
  - netcan 5y ago
    depends on the scale of your tax bill
  - okokwhatever 5y ago
    I'm sure Jeff's taxes must be interesting.
- pentae 5y ago
  I don't think the $100k Foreign-earned income exclusion matters to Bezos too much.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  He doesn't need to sail away for tax advantages. Tax lawyers are expensive, but not as much as the largest yatch in the world.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Despite the headline the details seem eminently reasonable. The bridge isn't going anywhere. They just asked the town if they can R&R the middle section of the bridge because the boat can't pass under it. This is a movable railway bridge so the R&R procedure is very, very simple and non-intrusive compared to any sort of bridge with a static span where the middle may be integral to the strength of the rest. This sort of temporary removal of infrastructure is bog standard in the "hauling absurdly large and heavy things" world. It'll probably be a 9pm-5am closure or something like that and the locals will get to look at a larger than usual boat moored just upstream of the bridge and a large marine crane moored downstream in the days leading up to it.
- Retric 5y ago
  It’s a historic bridge not in active use.
  - weatherlight 5y ago
    That's worse, it implies with enough money, something designated historical for cultural reasons can be bought, modified, commodified, or changed to accommodate the whims of one exceptionally wealthy man.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - musingsole 5y ago
      Does it? To me, it implies that pride is the only actual utility of the bridge. Disabling the bridge wouldn't even inconvenience the municipality. So, lifting the bridge up and then putting it back down over the course of a couple hours is only as expensive as the labor to do it plus the risk to damaging the bridge. From the view of a city council who may or may not love this monument, it's a complete and utter win: * Tell the whole world we have this monument * Collect money from the idiots who need to move it * Collect even more money from the idiots if they screw it up.
    - 5y ago
542458 5y ago
127m being meters, not millions (although heaven knows how much this thing costs). And the dismantling being limited to temporarily removing the center span of the bridge as well, in case that was ambiguous. I don’t have any affection for Bezos, but this doesn’t seem that ridiculous to me. The municipality wants the jobs that come with building yachts, the trade off of having to sometimes adjust infrastructure to make it happen seems reasonable.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  The bridge dismantling isn’t why a huge personal yacht is disgusting, indeed. It is just a poor choice of resource allocation, any way you look at it. Personally for Bezos, or as a society
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Why do you think so? Isn't it much cheaper and easier on the environment to dismantle a bridge (that was probably built with that in mind) than to move an entire city of professionals+the infrastructure around them away to a more suitable place?
    - hoseja 5y ago
      I think they meant, building/owning a superyacht.
    - fooqux 5y ago
      I think the point was the millions spent on this boat could have been allocated instead to improving society, rather than a boat that will likely only get used once per year.
      - jl6 5y ago
        I’m sure the boat builders are very happy to take the money. It’s not like the money just disappears. The only resources being used up here are one boat’s worth of metal/plastic/energy/whatever. Probably about as much as a couple of hundred cars.
glanzwulf 5y ago
Ah... to be this rich where a bridge is dismantled for you!
aliswe 5y ago
I would argue that a more accurate title would be "Dutch shipyard coerces government to dismantle Rotterdam bridge temporarily"
imajoredinecon 5y ago
The title is really misleading. Bezos isn’t sailing through the bridge and having it dismantled to get it out of his way. A Rotterdam shipbuilder _assembling_ the yacht has specialized requirements and needs to do part of the assembly on one side of the bridge.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  But it’s a lot funnier imagining a Duke or Lord riding atop his minions (literally on their backs) and nonchalantly waiving to have trees and villages be destroyed to accommodate his path. Oh, and that whole going to space thing in a giant dick shaped rocket.
consp 5y ago
Do note that the bridge is not in use for traffic and only a monument. The government did say it wasn't going to be dismantled anymore though.
yourusername 5y ago
It's not a bridge that is actually in use. It's a historical bridge that's a national monument.
- dijit 5y ago
  That's... worse.
  - Someone 5y ago
    It may not be. The bridge (https://rotterdampages.com/architecture-de-hef-rotterdam/ https://rotterdampages.com/architecture-de-hef-rotterdam/) has a movable deck that can be taken out and hung back, so if the opening between the pillars is wide enough for the yacht, it should be a fairly easy operation.
    - crote 5y ago
      Yes, and the last time that happened it caused such a commotion that the government promised to never do it again.
      - pharke 5y ago
        I thought the 'commotion' was due to them wanting to demolish it originally.
gostsamo 5y ago
I didn't find who will pay for the costs of the removal and restoration.
- smhg 5y ago
  Dutch media says the shipyard and Bezos.
- ProblemFactory 5y ago
  According to https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-let-jeff-bezos-pleasure-yacht https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-l... the shipbuilder will pay for it. It will take a week to take the bridge apart and another week to put it back together. Which is no big deal compared to the alternatives of a) missing out on a $500m contract for the local shipbuilding industry or b) moving the entire shipyard downriver.
mabbo 5y ago
What annoys me about this isn't that it's Bezos building a ridiculous yacht. Eat the rich and all that aside, let's talk about the arrogance of Oceanco. They knew the height of the bridge. They knew the planned height of the yacht. The started building anyway without first asking. They simply presumed they could get what they wanted. How? Well the article explains how very well. > He added: "From an economic perspective and maintaining employment, the municipality considers this a very important project." The veiled threat being "Oh, you like having jobs here? Would be a shame if something happened to that." And of course they could just not put the mast on here, and do it elsewhere, but: > it was "not practical" to partially finish the vessel and complete the build elsewhere. "If you carry out a big job somewhere, you want all your tools in that place. Otherwise you have to go back and forth constantly. In addition, this is such a large project that there are hardly any locations where this work is finished." IE: We do have other places we could do this work, but just not as cheaply as we can do it here, by inconveniencing the local population for days by removing their bridge. And Rotterdam will probably do what they say. Because they're right- the corporations do control them this way.
- fastball 5y ago
  Well either the jobs are worth it or they are not. This actually does seem like a clear cut case of "if you won't do this for us we can't keep building here".
- riddleronroof 5y ago
  Yeah agreed. They should pay for the bridge’s removal/construction.
  - GrumpyNl 5y ago
    The yacht builder will pay for dismantling and rebuilding the bridge.
  - unmole 5y ago
    > They should pay for the bridge’s removal/construction. Oceano and Bezos will reimburse the costs: https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-let-jeff-bezos-pleasure-yacht https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-l... This is much ado about nothing.
d--b 5y ago
Great use of humanity's time...
- danlugo92 5y ago
  We gave him our time(money), by buying from Amazon instead of the local Mom and Pop.
bitwize 5y ago
"Check it out, Larry -- the Dutch are taking down their bridges for my boat!" "That's real nice, Jeff. Call me when you buy a whole Hawaiian island to moor it next to."
andylynch 5y ago
This seems … fine? Rotterdam is a huge shipping centre and doing things like this is not unusual for oversize components - if this was for a power station or the like it would be almost wholly unremarkable outside the local news.
civilized 5y ago
Why do so many billionaires have to get a yacht? Surely there are some who just aren't that interested in sailing? Couldn't some of them have some more unique and wacky super-expensive hobbies just to shake things up? Like tennis with solid gold rackets or something?
- sofixa 5y ago
  > Couldn't some of them have some more unique and wacky super-expensive hobbies just to shake things up Like space travel maybe? :P
  - civilized 5y ago
    That's just a fancier yacht IMO :P
- kiliantics 5y ago
  why not both? https://yachtharbour.com/news/inside-the-first-superyacht-to-have-an-indoor-tennis-court-2352?src=news_view_page_bar https://yachtharbour.com/news/inside-the-first-superyacht-to...
stevespang 5y ago
air7 5y ago
This is perhaps a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I'm always pleased when I hear ultra-rich people spending exorbitant amounts of money on something. Without going into the discussion of whether or not people should be able to accumulate huge fortunes in the first place, given the fact that they exist, such spending means that they are putting huge sums of money back into the hands of "the people": In exchange for this boat, Bezos is moving 500M$ from his bank account to the bank accounts of many, many people working on it directly and indirectly thus moving the pendulum a tiny bit towards financial equality. Considering that the real-world alternative was for him to not have done this, remain under the radar, and keep 500M laying around, I think this is the better option.
- newaccount74 5y ago
  The alternative isn't that the money sits in a bank account. The better alternative would be that those 500M went to Amazon employees instead of the CEO. The employees could have used it to buy nice winter boots for their kids. Probably a lot more useful than yet another boat dumping tons of toxic waste into the ocean.
  - fastball 5y ago
    You are allowed to start a company as a co-op. Feel free to start your own Amazon competitor.
  - chucksta 5y ago
    Boat or bank are the only two current realistic alternatives I see. At least the boat builders & associated kids get some new boots. There are thousands of nicer alternatives that aren't going to happen
  - radford-neal 5y ago
    Money sitting in a bank account is fine. It's not using any real resources sitting there. Of course, he might spend it sooner or later, which would probably be bad for everyone except him. So even better (for everyone but him) would be if he converted the money to paper bills, and then burned them all. That would benefit millions of people. (Exactly who would depend on which country's currency the bills were in.)
cloutchaser 5y ago
On a sidenote, has Blue Origin gone quiet since Bezos was in space? Was that the goal, to get him into semi-space, now they can shut down?
mrfusion 5y ago
How come the rich don’t buy airships instead? That would be a lot more fun to cruise around in.
GistNoesis 5y ago
Why not lower the water under the bridge ? A 150m floating pool (mobile floodgate) where you put the boat in, from which you pump the water out to lower the boat. If the river is deep enough, that would be a reusable solution.
0xbadc0de5 5y ago
Bezo's can have his yacht - it means jobs for the thousands of people it takes to build, operate it, maintain it, supply it and even those write outrage articles about it.
dayofthedaleks 5y ago
Lift Bridge Loosened for Louche Launch Once upon a time masts were easily broken down for this sort of problem, but this thing's design must involve some sort of vertical turbines that aren't so easy to remove. It's hard to get too upset about what amounts to a minor restoration of a steel engineering heritage site, but I wonder how many times you repeat the process before you either put your shipyard out by the container terminals or else put some pedestals underneath the structure to raise it as it's no longer connected to an active rail line.
kubb 5y ago
Communism is when you don't have to dismantle bridges to accomodate that one guy who got rich because the local economy depends on building a boat for him.
stunt 5y ago
Building ships and moving bridges. Aren't Dutch notoriously good at both? Why is it a big deal then.

Mega rich guy gets special treatment. People are annoyed. The optics of this would be so easy to fix. Mega rich guy pays for revered landmark to be taken apart and put back together, but look, also pays for a new coat of paint. Everybody happy.

float4 5y ago

I'm Dutch. The way I see it, a 500 million dollar yacht is being built in my country, and in return we have to dismantle a bridge, that isn't even in use, for a single day and we don't have to pay for it. Although I find the super yacht industry rather disgusting, in this particular instance it sounds like a pretty good deal for Rotterdam honestly.

okokwhatever 5y ago

Demonstrate you're living more than X months in your yatch out of jurisdictional water.... profit!

baud147258 5y ago
well, not profit, but at least that should mean a few tax breaks. Though not sure you'd make a profit when taking into consideration the cost of the yatch
- netcan 5y ago
  depends on the scale of your tax bill
- okokwhatever 5y ago
  I'm sure Jeff's taxes must be interesting.
pentae 5y ago
I don't think the $100k Foreign-earned income exclusion matters to Bezos too much.
rmbyrro 5y ago
He doesn't need to sail away for tax advantages. Tax lawyers are expensive, but not as much as the largest yatch in the world.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Despite the headline the details seem eminently reasonable. The bridge isn't going anywhere. They just asked the town if they can R&R the middle section of the bridge because the boat can't pass under it. This is a movable railway bridge so the R&R procedure is very, very simple and non-intrusive compared to any sort of bridge with a static span where the middle may be integral to the strength of the rest. This sort of temporary removal of infrastructure is bog standard in the "hauling absurdly large and heavy things" world. It'll probably be a 9pm-5am closure or something like that and the locals will get to look at a larger than usual boat moored just upstream of the bridge and a large marine crane moored downstream in the days leading up to it.

Retric 5y ago
It’s a historic bridge not in active use.
- weatherlight 5y ago
  That's worse, it implies with enough money, something designated historical for cultural reasons can be bought, modified, commodified, or changed to accommodate the whims of one exceptionally wealthy man.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - musingsole 5y ago
    Does it? To me, it implies that pride is the only actual utility of the bridge. Disabling the bridge wouldn't even inconvenience the municipality. So, lifting the bridge up and then putting it back down over the course of a couple hours is only as expensive as the labor to do it plus the risk to damaging the bridge. From the view of a city council who may or may not love this monument, it's a complete and utter win: * Tell the whole world we have this monument * Collect money from the idiots who need to move it * Collect even more money from the idiots if they screw it up.
  - 5y ago

542458 5y ago

127m being meters, not millions (although heaven knows how much this thing costs). And the dismantling being limited to temporarily removing the center span of the bridge as well, in case that was ambiguous. I don’t have any affection for Bezos, but this doesn’t seem that ridiculous to me. The municipality wants the jobs that come with building yachts, the trade off of having to sometimes adjust infrastructure to make it happen seems reasonable.

gameswithgo 5y ago
The bridge dismantling isn’t why a huge personal yacht is disgusting, indeed. It is just a poor choice of resource allocation, any way you look at it. Personally for Bezos, or as a society
- emteycz 5y ago
  Why do you think so? Isn't it much cheaper and easier on the environment to dismantle a bridge (that was probably built with that in mind) than to move an entire city of professionals+the infrastructure around them away to a more suitable place?
  - hoseja 5y ago
    I think they meant, building/owning a superyacht.
  - fooqux 5y ago
    I think the point was the millions spent on this boat could have been allocated instead to improving society, rather than a boat that will likely only get used once per year.
    - jl6 5y ago
      I’m sure the boat builders are very happy to take the money. It’s not like the money just disappears. The only resources being used up here are one boat’s worth of metal/plastic/energy/whatever. Probably about as much as a couple of hundred cars.

glanzwulf 5y ago

Ah... to be this rich where a bridge is dismantled for you!

aliswe 5y ago

I would argue that a more accurate title would be "Dutch shipyard coerces government to dismantle Rotterdam bridge temporarily"

imajoredinecon 5y ago

The title is really misleading. Bezos isn’t sailing through the bridge and having it dismantled to get it out of his way. A Rotterdam shipbuilder _assembling_ the yacht has specialized requirements and needs to do part of the assembly on one side of the bridge.

crate_barre 5y ago
But it’s a lot funnier imagining a Duke or Lord riding atop his minions (literally on their backs) and nonchalantly waiving to have trees and villages be destroyed to accommodate his path. Oh, and that whole going to space thing in a giant dick shaped rocket.

consp 5y ago

Do note that the bridge is not in use for traffic and only a monument. The government did say it wasn't going to be dismantled anymore though.

yourusername 5y ago

It's not a bridge that is actually in use. It's a historical bridge that's a national monument.

dijit 5y ago
That's... worse.
- Someone 5y ago
  It may not be. The bridge (https://rotterdampages.com/architecture-de-hef-rotterdam/ https://rotterdampages.com/architecture-de-hef-rotterdam/) has a movable deck that can be taken out and hung back, so if the opening between the pillars is wide enough for the yacht, it should be a fairly easy operation.
  - crote 5y ago
    Yes, and the last time that happened it caused such a commotion that the government promised to never do it again.
    - pharke 5y ago
      I thought the 'commotion' was due to them wanting to demolish it originally.

gostsamo 5y ago

I didn't find who will pay for the costs of the removal and restoration.

smhg 5y ago
Dutch media says the shipyard and Bezos.
ProblemFactory 5y ago
According to https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-let-jeff-bezos-pleasure-yacht https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-l... the shipbuilder will pay for it. It will take a week to take the bridge apart and another week to put it back together. Which is no big deal compared to the alternatives of a) missing out on a $500m contract for the local shipbuilding industry or b) moving the entire shipyard downriver.

mabbo 5y ago

What annoys me about this isn't that it's Bezos building a ridiculous yacht. Eat the rich and all that aside, let's talk about the arrogance of Oceanco. They knew the height of the bridge. They knew the planned height of the yacht. The started building anyway without first asking. They simply presumed they could get what they wanted. How? Well the article explains how very well. > He added: "From an economic perspective and maintaining employment, the municipality considers this a very important project." The veiled threat being "Oh, you like having jobs here? Would be a shame if something happened to that." And of course they could just not put the mast on here, and do it elsewhere, but: > it was "not practical" to partially finish the vessel and complete the build elsewhere. "If you carry out a big job somewhere, you want all your tools in that place. Otherwise you have to go back and forth constantly. In addition, this is such a large project that there are hardly any locations where this work is finished." IE: We do have other places we could do this work, but just not as cheaply as we can do it here, by inconveniencing the local population for days by removing their bridge. And Rotterdam will probably do what they say. Because they're right- the corporations do control them this way.

fastball 5y ago
Well either the jobs are worth it or they are not. This actually does seem like a clear cut case of "if you won't do this for us we can't keep building here".
riddleronroof 5y ago
Yeah agreed. They should pay for the bridge’s removal/construction.
- GrumpyNl 5y ago
  The yacht builder will pay for dismantling and rebuilding the bridge.
- unmole 5y ago
  > They should pay for the bridge’s removal/construction. Oceano and Bezos will reimburse the costs: https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-let-jeff-bezos-pleasure-yacht https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-l... This is much ado about nothing.

d--b 5y ago

Great use of humanity's time...

danlugo92 5y ago
We gave him our time(money), by buying from Amazon instead of the local Mom and Pop.

bitwize 5y ago

"Check it out, Larry -- the Dutch are taking down their bridges for my boat!" "That's real nice, Jeff. Call me when you buy a whole Hawaiian island to moor it next to."

andylynch 5y ago

This seems … fine? Rotterdam is a huge shipping centre and doing things like this is not unusual for oversize components - if this was for a power station or the like it would be almost wholly unremarkable outside the local news.

civilized 5y ago

Why do so many billionaires have to get a yacht? Surely there are some who just aren't that interested in sailing? Couldn't some of them have some more unique and wacky super-expensive hobbies just to shake things up? Like tennis with solid gold rackets or something?

sofixa 5y ago
> Couldn't some of them have some more unique and wacky super-expensive hobbies just to shake things up Like space travel maybe? :P
- civilized 5y ago
  That's just a fancier yacht IMO :P
kiliantics 5y ago
why not both? https://yachtharbour.com/news/inside-the-first-superyacht-to-have-an-indoor-tennis-court-2352?src=news_view_page_bar https://yachtharbour.com/news/inside-the-first-superyacht-to...

stevespang 5y ago

air7 5y ago

This is perhaps a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I'm always pleased when I hear ultra-rich people spending exorbitant amounts of money on something. Without going into the discussion of whether or not people should be able to accumulate huge fortunes in the first place, given the fact that they exist, such spending means that they are putting huge sums of money back into the hands of "the people": In exchange for this boat, Bezos is moving 500M$ from his bank account to the bank accounts of many, many people working on it directly and indirectly thus moving the pendulum a tiny bit towards financial equality. Considering that the real-world alternative was for him to not have done this, remain under the radar, and keep 500M laying around, I think this is the better option.

newaccount74 5y ago
The alternative isn't that the money sits in a bank account. The better alternative would be that those 500M went to Amazon employees instead of the CEO. The employees could have used it to buy nice winter boots for their kids. Probably a lot more useful than yet another boat dumping tons of toxic waste into the ocean.
- fastball 5y ago
  You are allowed to start a company as a co-op. Feel free to start your own Amazon competitor.
- chucksta 5y ago
  Boat or bank are the only two current realistic alternatives I see. At least the boat builders & associated kids get some new boots. There are thousands of nicer alternatives that aren't going to happen
- radford-neal 5y ago
  Money sitting in a bank account is fine. It's not using any real resources sitting there. Of course, he might spend it sooner or later, which would probably be bad for everyone except him. So even better (for everyone but him) would be if he converted the money to paper bills, and then burned them all. That would benefit millions of people. (Exactly who would depend on which country's currency the bills were in.)

cloutchaser 5y ago

On a sidenote, has Blue Origin gone quiet since Bezos was in space? Was that the goal, to get him into semi-space, now they can shut down?

mrfusion 5y ago

How come the rich don’t buy airships instead? That would be a lot more fun to cruise around in.

GistNoesis 5y ago

Why not lower the water under the bridge ? A 150m floating pool (mobile floodgate) where you put the boat in, from which you pump the water out to lower the boat. If the river is deep enough, that would be a reusable solution.

0xbadc0de5 5y ago

Bezo's can have his yacht - it means jobs for the thousands of people it takes to build, operate it, maintain it, supply it and even those write outrage articles about it.

dayofthedaleks 5y ago

Lift Bridge Loosened for Louche Launch Once upon a time masts were easily broken down for this sort of problem, but this thing's design must involve some sort of vertical turbines that aren't so easy to remove. It's hard to get too upset about what amounts to a minor restoration of a steel engineering heritage site, but I wonder how many times you repeat the process before you either put your shipyard out by the container terminals or else put some pedestals underneath the structure to raise it as it's no longer connected to an active rail line.

kubb 5y ago

Communism is when you don't have to dismantle bridges to accomodate that one guy who got rich because the local economy depends on building a boat for him.

stunt 5y ago

Building ships and moving bridges. Aren't Dutch notoriously good at both? Why is it a big deal then.