[747] Of bridge of euphemism: ignoramus

If a person plans to take side on an issue, it’s extremely wise to comprehend the situation first. Failure will bring ridicule and signals ignorance. Here, I wish to highlight a surprisingly ignorant reason why some people are opposing the crooked, scenic Malaysian half-bridge. These people are opposing the bridge because they think the bridge will end in the middle of the Tebrau Strait. In truth, the bridge will be connected to the Causeway and it’s not a multimillion culdesac.

Let me show you.

People think the bridge would be like this:

People who have this picture in their mind will always say with scorn that we would need to swin to Singapore once we reached the end of the bridge.

In reality, the bridge will look like this:

Image taken from Google Maps. I hope it qualifies as fair use.

As you can see, it’s a half bridge because it’s half a bridge and another half a causeway. Not one part bridge and the rest, water. There’s no need to swim and suffer being wet to get across the strait unless you really love swimming.

Don’t believe me? What? Me? A liar? What? Me, a BN lover?

No, I’m being pragmatic. There’s no need to be a rebel without a cause; a rebel that protests to everything for the mere sake of rebelling – that’s an insincere protest. It’s immature and stupid. Much like those in the price hike protest. In the Star last Friday, there was an article about the bridge. The writeup has a picture of the bridge plan and here’s the picture:

Observe the rightmost diagram. See it?

As to why it’s crooked, well, it’s the only way to gain a required height – in this case, 25 m (25 m is also the air draught for the Second Link to the west) – given the length constraint due to Singaporean refusal to demolish their half of the Causeway. If Singapore had agreed to a bridge and demolish their part of the Causeway, the bridge wouldn’t need to be crooked in order to obtain that 25 m. Once the bridge is completed, Malaysian half of the Causeway will be demolished and the bridge will be linked up to Singaporean half.

I hope this will clear things up for all those ignoramuses out there, particularly those at Lowyat.net’s Real World Issues forum.

Heh, the ignoramuses have already zipped their mouth by the time they found out that the bridge won’t end in the middle of nowhere. If it did end in the middle of nowhere, even I would vehemently disagree to it. But it is not and I fully support the Malaysian initiative.

Next time, really, learn the issue first. This includes the price hike but that’s another story I’ll chance another time.