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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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? =/

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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.

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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.

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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!!

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