At Long Last The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge to Go Ahead
Written on February 29, 2008 by Macau
The governments of Hong Kong, Guangdong, and Macau yesterday endorsed the financing scheme for bridges linking the three places and the massive project will soon proceed to public tenders. Macau’s casino magnate Dr Stanley Ho has said that he is interested in bidding for the project.
It is expected a number of state- owned enterprises will play a major role in building the bridges expected to cost between US$4-5 billion. The Hong Kong listed China Communication Construction Company and China Railway have a long history in building infrastructure projects in the mainland, Hong Kong and overseas.
Hopewell Holdings co- managing director Thomas Wu Man- sun said Hopewell Highway could be among the bidders. Hopewell Highway has the financial capability, with around US$775 million in cash and a further US$380 million in borrowing.
Wu said his company has had discussions with the three state enterprises on the construction of bridges before but refused to say whether they discussed the Hong Kong- Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.
Under the agreement Hong Kong will meet just over half of the total cost, at 50.2 percent, with Guangdong chipping in 35.1 percent and Macau 14.7 percent.
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge will stretch across 36 kilometres combining a 6.7-kilometre seabed tunnel in the middle of the Pearl River and two bridge segments about 29.6 kilometres.
Two artificial islands measuring one kilometre each will also be built to join the two ends of the tunnel with the bridge segments of six traffic lanes designed with a speed of 100 kilometres.
The tunnel will be laid at 40 metres under the waters.
The landing points of the bridge will be in the reclaimed land of Macau’s north-eastern district known as “The Pearl”, Shek San Shek Wan in Hong Kong’s Lantau Island, and Zhuhai’s Gongbei.
Once the bridge is in operation, it will allow people to commute from Hong Kong to Macau or Zhuhai in about 30 minutes.
If vehicles using the bridge have to pay tolls, the profits will divided along the same percentages as the costs.
Technorati Tags: macau, Stanley Ho
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March 1st, 2008 at
[...] MacauDailyBlog provides an update on the financing of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. This is an exciting project that should make it easier and more convenient for people to travel to Macao from both Mainland China and Hong Kong. Lets hope that this actually pans out, and gets built in our lifetime. If you want to learn more about this, Wikipedia has a surprisingly detailed entry on it. [...]