BIG BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

Denmark loves building long bridges and tunnels, those of 20km or more. A big link goes over the Great Belt and joins Fünen, where I live, with Zealand. The next one was built over the Øresund from Copenhagen to near Malmø in Sweden, the bridge in the TV serien "Broen". Now there is a plan to link southern Zealand with Germany, the so-called Femern link.

The Germans have always been iffy about the project. From their perspective, it's easy enough to get to Denmark; north of that, there's only Norway, Sweden and Finland, and there is already an overnight ro-ro ferry from Lübeck. So although they agreed to the link, it was on condition that Denmark financed the whole thing. The only bit that they would pay for are some onshore works where the bridge/tunnel comes onshore.

That's probably not such a bad decision. The original cost of the project, which has barely begun, was kr.33 billion, to be paid back over 29 years; that has already spiralled to kr.49.4 billion, to be paid back over 39 years. Nobody expects the final price to come in under that.

Still, large-scale infrastructure projects can often end up bringing great benefits for many years to come (witness the Victorian railway boom). The only problem is that there is less money today for this sort of thing than in the 1840's, and a lot less entrepreneurial spirit.

Walter Blotscher