A Place to Stand

The costed tunnels our government have compared a new Forth crossing to are (PP 6 & ):
PROJECT COST
Madrid M30 Motorway €792
Kuala Lumpur, SMART US $514M
Dublin Port Tunnel €752M
A86 Paris €2.23Bn
Westerschelde, Hollan €726M
Chongming South RMB 12.3 Bn (app£120M)

Jack Lynch Tunnel Ire IR£70M
Warnow Tunnel, Germany €224M
Öresund Crossing, Denmark DN KR 3.8Bn (app£340m)
Medway Tunnel, UK. £80M

It will be apparent that, despite many of them being far longer than the Forth crossing, these average in the low hundreds of millions. Not comparable with the £4673 price given for a Forth Tunnel & then used as the justification for spending £2.3 bn on a bridge. What may not immediately strike you is that they have omitted any comparison with the Norwegian tunnels which, since Norway has been building hundreds of kilometres of tunnels & it is a country Scotland is regularly compared to may seem strange. One explanation is that the Norwegian costs are so low as much as a thousandth of the cost we are told is required, that even our government is embarrassed. If there is another explanation perhaps somebody can give it.

The Norwegians are world champion tunnelers. They build road tunnels longer and cheaper than anyone else...

the most extraordinary feat of the Norwegians is their low tunnel costs. The Laerdal will cost $130m, just $2.5m/lane-km ($4m/lane-mi.)[£1.7m/km] Other tunnels are regularly built in Norway for $3m to $4m/lane-km.[£2 - 2.6million] In California or Washington DC the environmental studies and public hearings would cost that much

Looks like in Scotland such studies & hearings & mysteriously inexplicable other costs would cost 100s of times as much.

Labels: Forth crossing, Government parasitism, Science/technology, Scottish politics

Mark Wadsworth says

In the Office for National Statistics (ONS) report on the state of the nation... Over the same period [1970 to 2007] housing, fuel and water had replaced food and non-alcoholic drinks as the biggest household expenditure.

7. Now, if housing is now the biggest item of expenditure (which it clearly is, about one third of people's net incomes) and has got more expensive over the last forty years, we'd expect younger people to be living in smaller houses and/or buying a house (and getting married, settling down and having children) later in life. In a related article the BBC reports:

The traditional nuclear family is in decline in Britain as more people chose to live alone or as couples without children, data suggests.[this might be because fewer young people 'settle down' or because older people are surviving their partners for longer]. The number of people living in family homes with children fell from 52% in 1961 to 36% in 2009, the ONS says. In their Social Trends 40 report, official statisticians say 28% of homes are single person households, while 29% contain childless couples. This is up from 11% and 26% respectively on 1961.

The proportion of people living in lone parent households has also increased over the past half century, jumping from 3% in 1961 to 12% in 2009 [blame the welfare system for that, separate issue]. The Office for National Statistics said the most common type of household was the couple family household, but that there had been a "decline" in the proportion of households containing a "traditional" family unit....

The ONS also said women were having babies later. The proportion of babies born to women under 25 in England and Wales was 47% in 1971. This had dropped to 25% in 2008. And fewer people are getting married, with 143,000 first marriages in England and Wales happening in 2007, compared with 340,000 in 1971...

I have previously shown how house prices are at least 75% political regulation. I replied

Demand is exceeding supply but only because the "planning" system prevents supply. If nothing else the fact that technology has improved makes it relatively to build higher & to build arcologies. Thus even if land prices were going up in real terms there could be more gomes per acre.

I have previously shown how house prices are 4 times what they could be so instead of 33% of income they could be 8% leaving us with an average 25% increase in standard of living. The extra spin offs in increased national spending feeding through to higher growth & not having to pay the "planner's" salaries would be enormous.

And Mark has described the follow through advantages of people being able to have families.

His remarks about the consequences of this state parasitism on having children echo what Steve Sailer has been saying, quite independently, about affordable family formation & its role in the demographic disappearance of western nations described by Al Fin.

Germany is shrinking — fast. New figures released on May 17 show the birth rate in Europe's biggest economy has plummeted to a historic low, dropping to a level not seen since 1946. As demographers warn of the consequences of not making enough babies to replace and support an aging population, the latest figures have triggered a bout of national soul-searching and cast a harsh light on Chancellor Angela Merkel's family policies.
According to a preliminary analysis by the Federal Statistics Office, 651,000 children were born in Germany in 2009 — 30,000 fewer than in 2008, a dip of 3.6%. In 1990, German mothers were having on average 1.5 children each; today that average is down to 1.38 children per mother. With a shortfall of 190,000 between the number of people who died and the number of children who were born, Germany's birth rate is well below the level required to keep the population stable.

...The Federal Statistics Office says Germany's population of 82 million could drop by up to 17 million over the next 50 years. Demographers fear a shrinking workforce will stymie growth and struggle to foot the bill for a rapidly aging population. "Germany's working-age population is likely to decrease 30% over the next few decades," says Kröhnert of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. "Rural areas will see a massive population decline and some villages will simply disappear — Germany will become a weak economic power in the future."_Time
There are limits to the state-supported urban lifestyle, and the shrinking populations of Europe, Russia, Japan, and other "advanced" nations are starting to feel the squeeze. Germany is very close to the point of no return.

But why focus on Germany? Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Japan, and Eastern Europe are worse off than Germany in almost every way.

It all comes round to the fact that we have literally unlimited opportunities if we choose the freedom to take them & can be almost unlimitedly constrained by government parasitism, affecting every aspect of society, if we let it.

Labels: British politics, Government parasitism, Social

Stonecutters bridge Hong Kong

The governments report on the comparison with other bridges worldwide is available here from page 14 . They compare the prices not with the £2,000 m it will cost us but the lower £748 price quoted which is not what it will actually cost. Nonetheless other countries prices are far lower. I have taken from the report what are described as "particular challenges" to other bridges (marked -) & reason for the Forth crossing being more expensive (bulletpointed).

Severn Bridge £575 million:
- Long crossing – the longest river crossing in the UK.
- Notorious currents, a 14.5 metre tidal range (2nd highest in world) and strong winds (hostile weather put the project three months behind schedule by 1995).
- The deck had to be installed from a floating barge.
- A rail tunnel was already below the bridge crossing.
- Monorail fitted to the bottom of the bridge for servicing.
• Only two towers, thus no central tower with stability issues.
• Single, shorter span than FRC.
• Depth of water in which the towers were installed is lesser than that faced by the FRC’s South tower and the foundations were simpler.

Mersey Gateway £380 million:
- Three towers like the FRC. In particular a unique design where the central tower is shorter is being employed.
- A curved approach at each end of the bridge.
- A lower deck with space for future light rail system.• Depth of water in which the towers are being installed is substantially less than that faced by FRC’s towers.
• Shorter crossing & FRC’s spans are more than double the length.
• Geology is more benign and environment is non-marine and sheltered.

Millau Viaduct £353m:
- Construction timetable of 3 years.
- Height of towers.
• FRC has longer spans.
• VdM towers built on land, thus simpler push-launching deck construction techniques used.
• Upper towers and cables could be added after deck in place.
• Easier geology and foundations.

Rion Antarion Bridge, Greece £539m:
- Length of crossing longer than FRC.
- Deeper water than FRC and weak seabed.
- This brought the need for rigid pyramid towers – the largest ever built for a bridge.
- Strong seismic activity, possible tectonic movements and high winds.• FRC requires piled foundations rather than pad footings like RA.
• FRC has longer spans.
• RA had more favorable weather conditions for construction.
15

Stonecutters bridge, Hong Kong £206m:
- Straddles narrow shipping channel near busy container port.
- High deck and towers to allow passage of super container vessels.
- Environmental constraints including fault line under bridge foundations, typhoons, current, visibility and daylight hours.
- Need for prevention of ground settlement to protect existing structures near bridge.
- Scope for structural modifications limited as appearance of the winning project from a design competition had to be maintained.
• Towers located on land and so easier foundations and less ship impact risk.
• Cheaper labour and material costs in Asia• Towers located on land and so easier foundations and less ship impact risk.
• Cheaper labour and material costs in Asia
• Environmental regulations less onerous

Oresund, Denmark/Sweden £804m:
* The bridge also comprises a double track railway on the lower deck.
* An artificial island was constructed to connect the bridge with the tunnel.
* Stringent environmental standards.
* The bridge crosses the Flintrannan shipping channel.
& Rough sea conditions and fitting of piers and spans from floating platforms.
• Two towers compared to FRC’s three.
• Single shorter main span.
• Shallower water for tower installation.
• Simpler spread foundations on well defined geology

To me these excuses or "Reasons why the costs may be lower than that for the FRC" look rather like ideas you might come up with after a few beers & seem contradictory - the reason given for the Greek bridge being cheaper is because the weather is better there (excluding the minor matter of earthquakes) but the weather is much worse in Hong Kong & Oresund; Oresund is described as "well defined geology" when it is built on an entirely artificial island; Severn & Oresund are cheaper because they only have 2 towers but Millau is not said to be artificially more expensive because it has many towers; the Hong Kong bridge is said to be cheaper because of cheap local labour but Hong Kong is actually 17% richer per capita, than we are now; the lack of regulation given as a reason in Hong Kong may be true but if so Oresund, where over regulation is specifically mentioned, should be more expensive unless we are suffering from even more state regulatory parasitism.

However the bottom line is that all the others come in at between £19m & £48m per lanes/km & the Forth one, taking the total cost as £748 million is £72m. However the other bridges are priced in terms of total actual. Taking the full cost of £2,300m which I very strongly expect is the absolute minimum we would end up paying that would be £221 million per mile. Of course if it went over budget like the trams & the parliament building etc it would be far more but I'm sure we will be promised it won't go over budget (just as we were specifically promised the trams & Parliament building wouldn't).

The comparison with tunnel costs is even more blatant.

Labels: Forth crossing, Government parasitism, Science/technology, Scottish politics

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night - we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

Rudyard Kipling
when windpower wasn't just a money laundering scheme

Western Society has, for 60 years & strongly for 50, been paying large amounts of money & enormous amounts of foregone technological potential to the eco-fascist movement. The surface part of this movement is a tiny number of aggressively Luddite political activists. The main body is empire building government bureaucrats who have pasted over the civil service's prime dictum, according to Sir Humphrey Appleby who knew, that "many things should be done but nothing should ever be done for the first time" with an "environmental" brush retitling it the "precautionary principle" but altering it only by extending it to every aspect of life.

How many of the tiny minority of activists would be active if they had not been government funded may be doubted. Neither of Scotland's 2 Green MSPs seem to have been paid for a day's work in their lives by anybody but government bureaucrats spending the public's gold. Possibly some Green party member may be able to name a prominent Green to whom this does not apply - we shall see if this challenge is answered. In any case Green activists openly admit that they support growing government bureaucracy simply because it does economic damage. On the other side the openly corrupt support of state institutions for what they know to be the "Green's" corrupt scare stories is equally undeniable.

The problem with Danegeld is, as Kipling pointed out, that once it is paid & the recipients rewarded they have every incentive to demand more & we certainly see this with the eco-fascist movement. The cost to the British people is, as has been proven in 2 separate calculation methods here & here, to be at least equal to the entire existing national wealth. It is likely to be much more - had we had 10% average UK growth over the last 40 years we would now each be individually over 16 times better off than we are.

Yesterday I pointed out how the Scottish government had genuflected towards the the eco-fascist anti-growth agenda by pretending that the need for a new Forth crossing was because the current one is in a state of collapse rather than because it would assist economic growth. Doing this has then made it politically necessary to choose the option of building a new bridge which is about 100 times more expensive than the more effective option of recabling & double decking the existing bridge. In turn what must be a mixture between parasitic eco-fascist regulatory parasitism & old fashioned corruption (how the split goes is as yet unproven) has increased that price 8 fold. This is simply 1 out of the enormous number of government activities yet it, alone, means every single one of us paying £440 Danegeld to these fascist parasites for this one project. Dividing the amount of national wealth lost & stolen by the eco-fascists annually by the 286,000 voters, which is the maximum they can get even with enormous support from the state media, comes to at least £5 million per elector. I suspect the vast majority of "Green" voters have no idea, because the state media censor it, that they are supporting theft on this scale, the destruction of Western civilisation & the genocide of most of the human race & indeed would be horrified to know it. The very small number of leaders are different.

In one way that is just money & doesn't compare with the fact that the eco-fascist movement has already killed more people than Hitler & Stalin combined. However the damage they have done to human progress generally (we could easily have ended all world poverty, have large settled communities across the solar system & be building the first starships by now had we not been paying the majority of the developed world's wealth as Danegeld to these eco-fascist. Instead they want to reduce the world's population to 2 billion, which would require the genocide of 70% of the entire human race. By any objective terms they have been much more destructive to civilisation that Hitler & his Nazi barbarians.

I don't think any of this can be factually denied by anybody associated with the eco-Nazi movement but, as with finding prominent members who don't live off our Danegeld. I'm sure we will be told if any can.

Labels: eco-fascism, Government parasitism, Science/technology

I have received this reply, at the behest of an SNP minister, which I am fisking. I have highlighted things I think important & put my comments in italics:

Dear Mr Craig
Thank you for your email of 24 June 2010 to the Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism, Jim Mather MSP regarding the Forth Replacement Crossing.

As this is a matter delegated to Transport Scotland, your email has been passed to me for a reply.

The outrun cost of the Forth Replacement Crossing Project is estimated to be between £1.72 billion and £2.34 billion. The estimated cost of the main crossing itself is estimated to be just 26% of the total project cost (£543 million) or 37% of the total once allowances for risk and optimism bias are included (£748 million). The financial memorandum for the Forth Crossing Bill can be found on page 41 of the Explanatory notes to the Bill (http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/bills/33-ForthCrossing/b33s3-introd-en.pdf). p43 of the pdf

The Forth Replacement Crossing Project includes the new crossing and improvements to the road network to support the crossing. Around 4km of connecting roads will be built to tie the new crossing into the main trunk road network. To the south of the bridge, a new dual carriageway will link the crossing to the A90 and M9 making use of the recently completed M9 spur.

To the north, a new dual carriageway will connect the bridge to the A90/M90, incorporating junction enhancements at Admiralty and Ferrytoll and road widening between those junctions.

The estimated cost for the bridge is compared with a number of similar bridges in The Forth Replacement Crossing Analysis of Costs produced by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) and can be found on the Scottish Parliament Bill Committees web pages: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/forthXbill/Documents4.htm. I'll write on these in detail in future but even taking the cost at £ 748 million, as the comparison does, the new Forth bridge is far more expensive

A tunnel was considered during 2006/2007 when Transport Scotland undertook the Forth Replacement Crossing Study (FRCS) (http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/projects/forth-replacement-crossing/information-centre/frc-study) again I will write on that site in future but the simple version is that, again, international comparisons average only a small fraction of construction only prices given here to ascertain the most suitable form of crossing to replace the Forth Road Bridge (FRB). This was in response to the Forth Estuary Transport Authority’s (FETA’s) reports that the cables of the existing bridge are deteriorating and the subsequent uncertainty over the future of this vital connection in the country’s transport network.

The FRCS concluded that a cable-stayed bridge upstream of the FRB was the best performing option against the Study criteria. The factors considered were cost; cost risk; impact on the environment; operating restrictions; operating risk and time to construct. tunnels generally take less time than bridges to complete, a further advantage is that since a 2 way tunnel will be cut 1 tunnel at a time the first leg can be used to carry peak hour traffic, reversing direction about noon, quickly thus greatly increasing the total capacity of the system The life design of both bridge and tunnel was estimated to be 120 years this effectively means it will last as long as maintenance is carried out. Telford's bridges are still standing as indeed is the Eiffel Tower which was originally intended to be pulled down after a few years and the maintenance costs were also determined to be broadly similar.

The Study concluded that the tunnel would be more complex to construct with more risks, and consequently, more costly. bolleaux In addition, tunnels are restricted in the goods that may be transported through them, such as whisky and oil. Operating restrictions would, therefore, need to be implemented. this looks like an excuse - the number of tankers carrying whisky is very limited & & would not justify the billions involved. The bridge also has operational restrictions when it is windy & they aren't limited to tankers. I would be interested to know if any haulier at all gas contacted FETA demanding a bridge on the grounds that a tunnel would seriously affect their profits

With regard to replacing the cables on the Forth Road Bridge, in February 2008 FETA reported that it would be possible to replace or augment the cables should this be necessary. They concluded that this replacement work would not be feasible, in practical terms, unless a replacement crossing were provided prior to the work taking place. I very seriously doubt the truth of this - Lisbon's 25th April bridge does not appear to have been closed when it underwent not merely a recabling but also double decking. It might be necessary to limit the work to late at night or weekends, which might double the cost to £ 20 million(!) but with the bill we are being offered that is nothing

In July 2008 a second cable inspection found that the cables had continued to deteriorate and had now lost 10% of their original strength. However, this rate of deterioration was less than had been expected. that nails it - "less than expected" deterioration for a bridge which, if similar to the present proposal, was expected to last 120 years, is not the alleged unexpected catastrophe we are being told about The rate of decay suggests that HGV restrictions may need to be imposed at some time between 2017 and 2021.

Aside from the cabling issues, a number of ongoing and significant maintenance issues remain. For the bridge to continue to carry the existing levels of traffic it would require replacement of main joints, deck resurfacing, extensive refurbishment to the deck stringer beam half-joints between each section of the decks, strengthening of the deck truss and upgrades to the parapets. all simple maintenance - none comparable to the strengthening of the towers whci has previously been done

The Forth Road Bridge cannot on its own provide the capacity and level of service required for the future. The imperative for a replacement crossing remains in light of the vital importance of a Forth crossing to the Scottish transport network and economy. the real reason for expansion is the expectation of a growing economy & increased traffic. That is indeed the proper reason for doing so, however the politicians, who have already voted to destroy half our economy over the next 9 years in the eco-fascist cause haven't the guts to say this so instead they push the the disgraceful (& unpatriotic) lie that the Scottish engineers who built the bridge did do so so incompetently that, unlike every comparable bridge in the world, it is about to fall down. (an MSP once told me that my proposal not to demolish the Red Road flats was equally impractical because the builders had been so incompetent & I don't believe him either). The consequence of lying about the reason seriously limits the "politically acceptable" options to the most expensive & then allows eco-fascist bureaucratic parasitism to push up cost far more - this will be tomorrow's sermon With a replacement crossing in place which will carry the main burden of traffic, the Forth Road Bridge will retain sufficient strength to act as a dedicated public transport corridor.

I hope you find this reply helpful.

Andrew Pope
Policy and Communications Officer
Forth Replacement Crossing Team

Thank you for your letter Andrew, which I have put on my blog with comments. While cost is given as a reason for not building a tunnel you do not repeat the £4673 million figure & are relying also on the difficulty of transporting oil & whisky.

Is it specifically claimed that recabling cannot take place without closing the bridge? If so that would be an argument for a tunnel since, as the Norwegians have shown, it could be cut quickly allowing earlier recabling. Has any haulier written to gthe scottish government saying that restrictions on their cargos would so seriously affect their profits that it should be a majgor consideration in this multi billion £ project?

If only a minority of the money is going to be spent on the bridge itself & the other main factor being new roads that seems to be an argument for recabling the bridge since roads to it already exist. It does seem to be a high cost for roads.

I take it that our government does not dispute that the Lisbon recabling cost £10 million & that similar Norwegian tunneling projects have indeed cost around £40 million?

Since the entry & exit points of a tunnel are not nearly as limited as with a bridge I would assume it could be fitted more easily & cheaply into the present road system - indeed is there any reason why the endpoints should not be beside the access roads to the current bridge if road costs are really such an overwhelming
factor.

You, or anybody else who understands the government case, are welcome to comment on my blog.

Labels: Forth crossing, Government parasitism, Science/technology, Scottish politics