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Do the math, please
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Posted on Dec 30 2004
A bridge between Saipan and Tinian? The concept is laughable. Certainly Sen. Luis Crisostimo (and now Mr. Ambrose Bennett, his supporter) must realize that a channel some 900 feet deep and several miles across could only be bridged at a cost of a billion or more dollars. Consider San Francisco as a reasonable comparative example: the new Bay Bridge is both a shorter and a much more shallow water stretch than the Tinian Strait. Even with a large (in the millions) and high income producing population, San Francisco and its surrounding city neighbors can’t come up with the money to bridge the San Francisco Bay without a massive influx of outside federal tax money. And they will have several hundred thousand people a day commuting, each paying an $8 toll to pay for just their small share of the cost. The estimates range near a billion dollars for their bridge. You know and I know that a government estimate is at least tripled by the time the job is actually finished. Compared to San Francisco, where labor and materials are close at hand, how much would a bridge to Tinian cost? How many bodies would cross each day? The economic impact would be what tiny number? Given a total budget of $217 million, how many lifetimes would it take for the CNMI’s share of construction to be paid? What kind of idiot would we have to find in the United States willing to commit political suicide by offering the federal funds needed to help build this boondoggle? This suggestion is not pie-in-the-sky; its pie in the face. Only Groucho Marx could have come up with a better laugh.
May I suggest an alternative? Take the billion tourists from China, which Mr. Froilan Tenorio seems to think will descend on Saipan, and use them to fill in the gap between the two islands. My concept has as much chance of success as Mr. Crisostimo’s. (To be fair, we should assume that Mr. Tenorio meant a million tourists and was simply misquoted, but Crisostimo and Bennett actually seem to be serious).
Perhaps a quote from Mark Twain says it best: “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
Bruce A. Bateman
Tanapag, Saipan
