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Bridge near Shanghai works out cheaper per km than second Penang bridge

Is the cost of the second Penang bridge way too high?

China yesterday inaugurated one of the longest sea bridges in the world - a six-lane 36km link (27km over sea) to connect Jiaxing city near Shanghai with Ningbo in the province of Zhejiang. And what is the cost? 11.8 billion yuan, which is RM5.3 billion (RM147 million per km).

In comparison, the cost of the proposed four-lane second Penang bridge, which is 24km (of which only 17km is above sea), is expected to cost at least RM4.3 billion (RM179 million per kim). It’s more than a third shorter than the bridge in China, and yet the cost is only about a fifth lower. The Edge even reported that UEM was seeking as much as RM4.8 billion for the Penang job.

So how? Something doesn’t look right. Why don’t we just expand the ferry service for a start to considerably ease congestion on the bridge while we explore a shorter rail link. Oh yeah, I forgot, that is too cheap a solution!

Still on the subject of transport, while Malaysian officials and planners can only think of multi-billion ringgit monorails and subways for our urban centres, the UK is rapidly turning to guided buses, guided trolley buses and trams as low-cost but efficient solutions to urban public transport in a string of British cities and towns. Check out this list of proposed schemes in the UK.

Again, this may be too cheap a solution for our planners’ liking… For some reason, they just love those multi-billion ringgit price tags.

21 Responses to “Bridge near Shanghai works out cheaper per km than second Penang bridge”

  1. It’s mean , we just need less than 6 bilion to make Melaka Dumai 6 lane Bridge.

  2. The solution to the transportation woes in Penang, KL, Selangor & JB and elsewhere in M’sia, can be achieved by a combination of lower-tech cost efficient and economically competitive projects such as:

    1. Single & Double Decker Bus
    2. Trams
    3. Trolley Bus
    4. Upgrading of existing railway/monorail/MRT service
    5. Taxi service
    6. Peak hour traffic control (CBD concept)
    7. More affordable toll highways.

    We do not need to be stuck in paradigm-shifting and what it has come to mean in M’sia - billion $ mega and/or stand-alone projects to impress the world, but burden users.

    We do not need to send ‘lawatan sambil belajar’ multi-million $ budgetted delegations to UK, Sweden etc. with a statutory stop-over in Cairo for a first-hand knowledge of belly-dancing, to get some idea of how to achieve this.

    A 6 months study trip by JKR & Transport experts to S’pore will suffice to show how a well integrated, affordable & efficient transport system works in the real world.

    Almost certainly, such projects cannot be sustained in our cities by the private sector without providing crippling government susidies, due to the relatively smaller populations, as compared to say, S’pore, London, Tokyo, NY or Bombay.

    Therefore, the Govt will have to come up with some other financing initiatives.

    It is time to explore a National Infrastructure Privatised Company listed on the KLSE, in which all the leading pension and Investment Funds such as EPF, Socso, PNB, LTH, Army Pension Fund, Amanah Saham as well as the general public can take stakes. Such an NIPC should be led completely by professionals employed on merit basis, with the govt holding a golden share as a watchdog and not as a hunting hound! Which M’sia would not plunk at least $1,000 for an investment in his own and the country future? Peanuts for the average citizen!!

    We have seen the disasters in the Toll Highway, IPP’s and Water privatisation contracts, where an unholy alliance of cronies and ex-civil servants with vested interests are holding the general public (ably assisted by their political masters)to ransom with well-padded agreements not open to public scrutiny (ridiculously protected by the OSA). The latest appears to be the sacndal over the $6 subsidy included in our Airport Tax, and paid to ERL, even if a person takes a taxi, bus or drives to KLIA??!!

    Local Private Sector construction companies can them be offered contracts on an open tender basis to secure for the public the most competitive costs. JKR and related government departments can be the maintenance corporation for the various uitlity/infrastructure businesses owned by NIPC.

    This is a hypothesis that can be debated by the powers-that-be with our Transport experts and consultants to refine into a workable model.

    The simple fact of the matter is we cannot no longer trust private-sector wholly profit-driven corporations to undertake such long-term projects with the interest of the consumer uppermost in mind in M’sia. What more can we then say about private-sector corporation with semi and completely monopolistic contracts held in a vice-like grip?

  3. May I seek permission to publish some of your posts (partially) and link back to your weblog?

    Thank you.

    (Sure, go ahead, you can link to whatever is posted in my blog - Anil)

  4. Very interesting anil,you do follow up with facts and ringgit.

    The points you gave make sense,however as long the cronies and glc company around to tender/negotiated tender,we the actual paymaster for all this project and salaries to the civil servants will goes to someone pockets.

    Can you also suggest how to come up with an idea to stop this vultures behind glc company.Or even the cronies.

    Raj Raman.Everyone now knows alot of vultures flying around,but how do we stop them?Hope your comments not be another commnents without finding a solution from the leech who suck $.

    I ALSO CAN DONATE A BIG AMONG OF CASH IF THE MONEY IS NOT MY HARD EARN MONEY.

  5. This is really a problem. I am sure that UEM is trying to build up its war chest for the next coming elections for their brothers and sisters in the camp.

    So, what is there for us to say anything? Does anyone know the Chinese Premier? Maybe a call to him may just make him shudder in fear and doubt about the sincerity of our government. I am shocked by the price tag put by UEM. I hope there is a proper audit done on this.

  6. All Mega projects seem to be very costly in Malaysia.I just wonder whether any detail cost analysis has been done for each of the projects.
    All Mega projects also seem to be mooted by private developer whose interest is profit maximization which can make a killing especially in the absence of competitive bidding.
    For the sake of the country, the Opposition should engage a team of experts to scrutinize the cost of each of these projects and reveal it to the Rakyat. Afterall it is public fund the government is using.
    Don’t get carried away by glamorous projects to be implemented in Penang.The people there may have to pay for it very dearly later.
    For any project the cost basically consists of cost of “material+labour(equipment)+profit”.If there is monopoly in the supply of any of these items, resultant cost is going to be high and rakyat has to bear the cost. If you look closely, policy such as AP and license for supply of sand cement and steel bars are probably monopolized and vested in the interest of a few in the country. Change the supply system you will get cost reduction.

  7. To,
    jeffrey and juan taman,

    How are we going to audit?This moron always says its official secret,Latest parliment one mp ask,what is the cost to maintained 4 jets bought from Rusia.

    Moron anwser:OFFICIAL SECRECT.CASE CLOSE.
    MR.ANIL-PLS FIND THE WAY TO AUDIT EVERY PENNIES.WE BLOGGERS WILL BE BEHIND YOU.

  8. Anil

    hi

    I am curious. Have you actually spoken to and shared your views with anyone within the Pg state govt? you seem to have some interesting ideas…

    (Thanks Ibrahim, but then again, lots of Penangites have lots of ideas these days… perhaps too many for the State Govt to handle! haha….Just doing my bit. - Anil)

  9. Public transport has never been a priority in this country. The government was more interested in putting more cars on the roads, building bridges, highways and charging toll.
    Yes, I have seen guided buses criss crossing the roads every minute of the day in Austria and all packed with passengers.
    Surely Penang is no bigger than Vienna.
    I have never encounted the Penang kind of traffic jams in any all the European cities I had visited. But then, this is Bolehland.

  10. Well, on the cost per km disparity, a few points comes to mind :

    1) Cost disparity in Shanghai vs Penang - Labour is cheaper there, and China is a producer of a lot of raw building materials like iron for steel.

    2) Seabed conditions - different seabed conditions need different levels of “conditioning” before construction of the bridge structure is possible. This may significantly affect the cost of the bridge.

    3) Different weather patterns may affect the shelf-life of building materials, and we know how the hot and humid weather here in Malaysia is excellent for rust to collect on steel bars, etc. Although I　think this shouldn’t affect costs too much.

    Just some views from an engineering point of view..

    Having said that, we have acknoledge that different bridge designs will significantly affect costs as well. For example, a bridge built with asthetics in mind is defintely gonna cost more than one that’s built with low budget in mind. Extra secondary facilities on the bridge like toilets, surau, temple, churchs, tokong or whatever will no doubt add to the building costs if they are present.

    Hence, I feel it is unfair to compare between these two bridges although they both carry the “made in China” tag. However, I guess what the author is concerned about is whether tax payer money is spent unnecessarily on the planned bridge construction in Penang since it is not offered through open tender and the proceedings up till now have been shady at best.

    For another thing, I too agree that our govt has demonstrated in the past to have a tendency to spend lavishly(and sometimes not completely necessarily) on projects. (Micheal Backman did describe Malaysians as “Boleh Spend” afterall.. hehe). Perhaps in view of the looming economic slowdown, more thift should have been practiced by our country’s leaders.

  11. Dattaya Muthiah on May 4th, 2008 at 6.45am

    Why not try out “Tut-tut” motorised tricycles as seen in the main cities in India, Indonesia, Thailand and opther poor countries. That would solve lots of fuel problems, travel times and bring about job opportunities.

    Malaysians had been talking about this form of transport some years ago but never tried theis system of transport.

  12. Problem is that there is never a Transportation Study carried out. BN Government is just trying to plug in the leakages (jams) and by introducing mega projects building highways and bridges here and there. Look at KL trains. They never integrate. To go from one system to the other, we have to walk. With oil hitting at US120/ barrel, the Minister of Transport needs to provide solution not only to KL but in Penang.

  13. We should understand that our government doesn’t have the cow brain to think of something which is economical and effective.They are arrogance but without brain ! They said if you didn’t like it you can leave !

  14. Dear Anil

    The great ‘Transport’ debate

    You gotta read these excerpts from the intro to Ben Elton’s (UK) 1991 ‘Gridlock’ about a group of aliens visiting Earth to make a 3-minute tv comedy item for their top-rated show ‘That’s Amazing’ :

    ‘But then, they were stumped. They had encountered one aspect of human activity which astonished and mystified even those hardened researches. Researchers who thought they had seen every illogicality and lunacy that the universe had to offer.

    All those things which we on Earth believe to be complex and difficult had been simplicity to these aliens - the situation in Beirut, what Hamlet’s problem was, how to set the timer on a 14-day VCR (although in fairness they managed to record a documentary about Tuscany rather than ‘Dirty Harry’ which is what they really wanted to watch)…whether an object exists when you are not looking at it (it does), whether there is a God (if you want), and why people eat KFC even though it makes them ill (human beings are stupid).

    They had seen pointless wars and pointless destruction. They had even visited the Tate gallery, listened to modern jazz, read the novels of James Joyce.

    … They scratched their multiple thought podules and said ‘Bugger me, that’s weird!’

    ……The problem was one of transport. They could see the long thin arteries along which humans travelled. They noted that after sunrise all the humans travelled one way and at sunset they all travelled the other. They could see that progress was slow and congested along these arteries, that there were endless blockages, queues, bottle-necks and delays causing untold frustration and inefficiency. All this they could see clearly. What was not clear to them, was why. They knew humanity was stupid.

    The super intelligent beings transmitted their data back to the producer of their programme who responded.

    ‘You’re mad, bellowed the producer. You’re tying to tell me that they’re all going in the same direction, travelling to much the same destinations and yet they’re all deliberately impeding the progress of each other by covering 6 square metres of space with a large, almost completely empty tin box?’

    ‘That’s exactly what we’re trying to tell you, boss.’

    ‘You’re lying,’ shouted the producer. You mean, a society sufficiently sophisticated to produce the internal combustion engine has not had the sophistication to develop cheap and efficient public transport?’

    ‘Yes, boss,’ said the researchers, ‘it’s true. There’s hardly any buses, the trains are hopelessly underfunded, and hence the entire population is stuck in traffic.’

    ‘Well, that’s amazing,’ said the producer. Get your asses back to Britain. We got a show.’

    Is’nt it amazing it that our M’sian triple degree Havoxhavudbridge transport consultants, ministers and government have learnt nothing from all these disaster which happened long ago in UK, USA, France and Germany.

    What do they do the Peoples’ Reps do when they go overseas on taxpayers’ money? The long-suffering ordinary people are mass victims of belly-dancing and shopaholic junkets at their expense!!

  15. I viewed this China bridge documentary program in the Discovery Channel years ago. Indeed, this China bridge has more engineering challanges than Penang Second Bridge.

    For examples,

    1. This area is hit by ferocious cyclon.

    2. The sea current in the bay is one of strongest in the world.

    3. There is a pocket of natural gas underneath the bridge which require special filing technique.

    As this suthor pointed out, the cost per mileage is still lowest than Penang brigde is something we have to ask our government (which is widely seen as corrupt).

    Anyway, inflated cost on non-tender projects by UMNO crony company is not a secret.

  16. Comment by 10J | Saturday, 3 May 2008

    =======================================================

    I believe you ignore engineering challenges for China Bridge as I mentioned earlier. This China Bridge is more more difficult to build than Penang Bridge.

    I also forget to mention that there is earthquake in China which require tougher bridge design. In another word, more expensive to build earthquale proof in China than Penang Bridge.

    There are fallacies in your assumptions besides the extreme engineering challenges faced by China Bridge.

    1. Labor cost in Shaghai area is not cheaper compared with any cities in Malaysia.

    2. China is a net importer of iron ore like Malaysia. We also have steel manufacturing and cement plants which can supply raw material to Penang Bridge at very competitive price as China.

    Any year one civil engineering student shall tell you that no way Penang bridge shall cost more than newly opened China bridge.

  17. Thanks for your comment khoo san. Just to clarify :

    1) Most of the people who worked on the Hangzhou Bay Bridge are not Shanghai dwellers but from peripheral disticts.

    2) Most of the people involved/are to be involved in any construction work in Malaysia are unlikely to be locals. So cost comparisons should be made accordingly.

    3) “The pre-stress technology enables the bridge to withstand the impact from an earthquake of 7 on the richter scale,” CHEC information manager Ma Jie on the proposed design for Penang Bridge 2. For the uninitiated, the Hangzhou Bay Bridge is built to withstand earthquakes of 7 on the richter scale too.

    Then again.. one more fact to consider =)

    4) no doubt M’sia and China will have different material and construction guidelines and standards. For instance, working in the steel industry, I can tell you that steel standards in China tend to be slightly more “laxed” than in other countries, meaning lower grade steel can be approved for construction in PRC than otherwise. This introduces more factors into the equation.. but of course we have to look at how different that is from the Malaysia construction steel standard and a host of other factors like Malaysia’s own construction challenges, etc.

    All these points, even yours, serve to demonstrate my stand that with so many factors involved, it is just unfair to make a comparison based on cost/km alone.

    Look at the following photo of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge and artists’ impression of Penang Bridge 2:

    http://www.hangzhoubaybridge.com/img/bridge1.jpg

    http://biz.thestar.com.my/archives/2007/7/26/business/leadpicpenangbridge.JPG

    How to compare apple vs orange? =/

  18. dunplaypuks

    you must thank tun mahatir for locking the citizens up for the next 30 years with all the high cost piratisation projects. hmm, he now says the cabinet may not be financially savvy enough and that is one of the reasons for the lopsided agreements in favour of the pirate sector. what an excuse! and he is happily retired and the citizens are all saddled with the burden.
    no, there’s no corruption. everything is above board. think whcih despot will not say that? look, Mugabe will also says he is absolutely clean and he has won the latest election and the opponents’ claims of victory are fraudulent. Dictators are the same everywhere. In their last hour in deathbed, they still think the rest is wrong and he is the only saviour for the country.

  19. To 10J,

    Let’s use our common sense to judge how can 6-lane bridge in a hostile bay is cheaper to build than 4-lane bridge in a pacific area with no earthquake, no typhoon and no huge tidal wave.

    Skilled construction workers from Chinese rural areas in not cheap anymore. If anyone telling me labor cost in Ningboa and Shanghai areas are cheaper than Malaysia meaning he/she has never visited China for last three years. FYI, Bangala or Indonesian workers shall cost lesser than local people.

    I still remember that Ipoh to Padang besar double track railway was quoted RM 20 billion by an Indian company. The project cost is scaled down RM 14.5 billion after the project awarded to local bumi MMC.

    I strongly believe the railway project cost can be reduced to RM10 billion and below under an international open tender.

    More ridiculous news is they (MMC) forgot to order coaches to meet the opening deadline. This sort of nonsense excuse only can happen in the Bolehland.

  20. To 10J,

    After I re-watched China bridge documentary, your hypothesis in saying lower grade steel maybe used in China is just a bias.

    China bridge is designed to last for 100 years of extreme environment with high-tech coating technique is applied for steel files.

  21. 3) “The pre-stress technology enables the bridge to withstand the impact from an earthquake of 7 on the richter scale,” CHEC information manager Ma Jie on the proposed design for Penang Bridge 2. For the uninitiated, the Hangzhou Bay Bridge is built to withstand earthquakes of 7 on the richter scale too.

    ===

    This statement need to be verified. If I am not wrong, this Hangzhou bay bridge is designed to withstand for more than 7 on the Richter scale. May have to review the whole documentary again. :-)
    Penang bridge is designed to withstand 7.5 on the Ritcher scale, not 7 according to some sources in internet.

    I got no idea why Penang second bridge needs to be over designed to withstand earthquake of 7 or 7.5 on the Ritcher scale.

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