What's holding back the construction of a bridge from Dover to Calais? Not too difficult in this age, surely?

Question

What's holding back the construction of a bridge from Dover to Calais? Not too difficult in this age, surely?

Answer 1

cost probably and why bother when the tunnel does the job?

Answer 2

How about the fact the bridge would have to be over 20 miles long, and would need to be constructed in the busiest shipping lane in the world.

Answer 3

I agree with Derek, cost and the Channel tunnel.

I'm not sure the channel tunnel has recouped its building costs yet, so why build a bridge?

Answer 4

the logistics of transporting that amount of building material

weather would close it most of the time

a hazard to shipping?

Answer 5

probably the ferry companies will stop it being built

Answer 6

"What's holding back the construction of a bridge from Dover to Calais?"

Probably the fact that nobody actually wants one...

Answer 7

Mainly cost and shipping. Th English Channel is one of the most traitorous  and busy waterways in the world. Very large ship only have about 2 feet clearance under their keels and the weather is almost unpredictable. As a result it would spend an awful lot of it's time closed either due to weather conditions or shipping incidents,.

In the end it took about a century to build the channel tunnel from it's first inception on a wish list and there was at least one false start

Answer 8

1 - We don't like the french and they don't like us so the "will" to do something about it is lacking.  :-)

2 - There is already a tunnel so why build a bridge?

3 - The tunnel struggled to be finanically bearable, if it ever did, and needed governement backing to support it.  I can't imagine anyone wanting to go through that sort of pain again.

4 - Physics of building a bridge: you either have a very long span and a very expensive and high bridge that will struggle in high winds, or you need to have shallow areas where you can place supports.  To my knowledge there are no such shallows.  The longest suspended bridge so far, is the Akashi-Kaikyo, and it is nearly 2km long.    The narrowest point of the Channel is 33km.  Quite a leap in technology would be needed to build a suspension bridge.  The depth of the dover staight is about 30m.  So lets say it is only that depth for 2/3rd of the crossing, you then need supports that are nearly a 100 feet from sea bottom to wave top, and then you need the foundation into the sea bed itself.  Moreover, the tides there are a bit on the fast side.  So they would need to be extra strong.

In other words, i dont see anyone contemplating a bridge any time soon, and if they did they wouldn't get financial backing.  Maybe a bridge to the isle of man instead??

Answer 9

Who wants to go to France that quickly ? The British don't, thats for sure:

The tunnel hasn't exactly been a jam-packed roaring sucess and ferries are often 75% empty.

All the longest bridges in the world ( and the channel bridge would become the longest ) are over quiet or fresh water...the channel is entirely different:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bri...

the longest "bridges" are really raised roads over swamps or nontidal estuaries/waters/wetlands.

Beuild over actual sea water and the record drops to 20 miles with no spans high enough to be navigable.

At the moment, the channel is packed with ships, i wouldn't want to be the one to compress them through a couple of navigable spans.

Answer 10

There's a lot of people who didn't think a tunnel was a good ideal, now your suggesting a bridge, no.

Why don't we just fill in the English Channel then we really can be part of Europe.