Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Southern bridge - follow up coming already!

I was glad to discover that there are other persons who are interested and vigilant enough about absurdly high costs of the new Southern bridge (DT) in Riga. Yesterday there was a website created, and even though those who do not speak Latvian may find tables, photos, and numbers enlightening enough.

Also, it did not take a long time to receive an official response from the Southern bridge builders. Today's Delfi and Dienas Bizness published the DT builders official response , where they customarily tried to assure readers that the bridge itself costs just 35,4mlj LVL (!!!). Also the DT Representatives assured that the Southern bridge should be the cheapest in Europe (!!!)...if to compare with other bridges in Greece (!) and Croatia. If the DT public relations experts wanted to compare building costs of the DT with their homologue's in Greece, so be it. But I really do not understand the point of saying that independent experts calculations are wrong, due to the fact that the same experts mix costs of the 800m bridge itself (35.4mlj) together with adjacent viaducts, ramps and additional roads totalling 8km in length. But show me the country where they do not count adjacent roads, ramps and viaducts into total costs ledger??? Even the simplest logic says that there is no need for a bridge without ramps and viaducts leading off from it:)

It is rather suspicious that the DT public relations people found it important enough to respond to the information published in anonymous website thus swiftly (just a day after anonymous report was published). There is a local proverb, however, about "a dog who knows what he was eating", and to paraphrase the ominous proverb I am wondering, whether the DT builders are not nervous "about the political promises they had to digest"?

P.S. The DT interim report one may find here.

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