Bridge to Nowhere: Are EU Subsidies for Andalusia Well Spent?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/questions-mounting-about-eu-development-aid-for-andalusia-in-spain-a-994844.html



Does Cádiz really need this massive new bridge to the mainland?

Bridge to Nowhere: Are EU Subsidies for Andalusia Well Spent?
By Christoph Pauly
October 01, 2014 – 05:43 PM

~snip~

What's more, she is popular, not least for her ability to mobilize external money for local projects. Currently, a five-kilometer-long (3.1 mile), €500 million bridge is under construction which will stretch from the island city of Cádiz to the mainland. It is to be the highest such structure in Europe and will also have a middle section that can be opened to allow megaships of the future to sail into the bay.

~snip~

Need for a New Bridge?

The activists from El Caso Cádiz see a connection between the giant bridge across the inlet and the container terminal. The six-lane highway only makes sense, they argue, if it is intended to provide trucks from the port access to the mainland. The city itself doesn't really need the bridge; there is already a three-lane span stretching across the narrow end of the inlet which is perfectly adequate. Indeed, the tight city center isn't able to handle any more vehicle traffic than it already has.

Had the expensive new bridge been included in the price tag for modernizing the port, it seems unlikely that the European Commission would have approved the subsidies. The costs would have massively exceeded the expected benefits of increased container traffic. Brussels has consequently continued to insist that the two projects are unrelated. The new bridge, the EU wrote in a letter to the citizens' initiative, is not necessary "for the full operational effectivity of the container terminal." The document notes that the Spanish state is financing the bridge and that it is being built to improve the city's connection to the mainland.

But even EU officials appear to be uncomfortable with that line of argumentation. Funding earmarked for the port expansion has still not been definitively released, pending the outcome of the El Caso Cádiz objection. Nevertheless, the state-owned port authority has moved ahead with construction on the strength of loans and advance payments from the European Commission.

[merrily]

1. Gee, if only they had Palin to say "thanks, but no thanks to the bridge to

nowhere."



I say, let's send her there.