Dear Editor,
I refer to Mr Edward Gonsalves’ letter in SN dated April 23 and captioned ‘At least 9000 vehicles a day use the Demerara Harbour Bridge,’ which is in response to my earlier letter in SN re the above subject. In my letter online SN referenced a statement by Mr Adams, GM of the bridge, that he collected $395M, ie, US$2M in 2010 from 5600 vehicles crossing the bridge per day.
This works out to be $200 per day for each vehicle.
My letter and calculations were based on 2000 vehicles per day crossing one way as you only pay once per crossing from the Georgetown end.
The headline of Mr Gonsalves’ letter states that 9000 vehicles use the bridge per day but in his letter he mentioned 5300 per day.
Using Mr Gonsalves’ figure of 5300 vehicles crossing the bridge per day and Mr Adams assuming a maximum cost of US$300M to build the bridge, the developer for the project would have to collect from each vehicle US$155 per trip just to break even. This works out to be $31,000 per day for each vehicle crossing. As I said in my earlier letter people would have no alternative but to resort to the speedboat to cross the river. The above cost does not include the developer’s profit, operation, maintenance, etc.
I am also maintaining that you cannot build this bridge in reinforced concrete, particularly the 330ft central span. You could also have problems with the supporting foundations.
Yours faithfully,
M Alli
