A Bridge Too Far (1) ...

 ... A Bridge Too Big?

Tim Berners Lee (Sir Tim! He's getting on a bit, being born in 1955)  is oft credited with "inventing the internet" which is only partly true. Timbo saw the huge potential that lay latent in technology used by the US military for its internal communications system. So he designed a range of simple (?) systems which would have the potential to create a world wide web of computers, allowing anyone and eveyone to share information anywhere.

His altruistic desires were noble, but with world wide accessibility comes the potential for world wide rubbish and world wide criminality.

An expert, Dean of the Faculty of On-line Learning at the University of the Arts London, David White ...

... has opined that "the internet is broken"; information is posted solely as a means of filling the ether with advertising. Try finding anything on any newspaper site and you will see what the keen Dean means.

Many bloggers earn cash by allowing adverts on their exciting and informative postings. 

fbb doesn't! 

Here is a screen shot from Ian Visits (mostly visiting London) blog ...

... where adverts are a bit less intrusive than many other blogs or vlogs.

Because of this advertorial impetus, we have to be careful about what we trust as we surf on line.

But even without adverts, it is an ongoing challenge to know what is "right" and what is maybe less obviously wrong.

For fbb, this looked interesting!

Both purport to show "the longest bridge in the world". It certainly looks impressive but (spoiler alert), are these pictures "right"?

YouTube is littered with videos about this record breaking bridge of which this is just one.

So where is it?

It's in China, innit? 

And China is, to use an often overused epithet, "big".

The little red dot on the coast (centre right) is where you might find Shanghai. One of the black squiggles is the Yangtze river.

Many of our readers will have heard of either or even both.

We can zoom in a bit ...

... and a bit more. And we can then see a map of the "bridge".

Readers may think, "what bridge" and their thought processes would be correct.

It ain't a bridge. It's a very long viaduct! Even the video admits that! The video also refers to the bridge as crossing the  Yancheng  Lake ...

... so maybe that's where that sinuous construction over the bright blue waters of somewhere might be located?

Well, No! This is the dull turgid green waters of Lake Yangchen ...

... and the "bridge" crosses a bit of it, lower left in the above aerial view.

It also skirts a bit more further east ...

... but that's the limit of water crossing of any noticeable size.

But if we look at another version of the map ...

... we might suspect that the "bridge" has links further afield than its Danyang and Kunshan end points. We can zoom in even further.

What might Danyang North be? And there is a Changzhou North a bit further east-ish.

The truth that is so far untold is that the Danyang Kunshan Grand Bridge is a railway viaduct carrying no motor traffic whatsoever. But the obscuration continues unabated because this picture ...

... is also NOT of the "bridge" in question.

So, almost everything that we have gleaned from the interwebnet so far on the subject of "the world's longest bridge" is, to put it delicately ...

 UTTER GARBAGE 

Spot the cars!

Spot the road junctions on the railway viaduct in a picture  from an article about "the transportation benefits" of the Danyang Kunshan Bridge.

Crackpot!

Tomorrow, fbb will attempt to unravel some of the truth. 

It ain't easy.

Just a thought ...

... should we now call the London viaduct of the Chatham and Dover Railway a long bridge?

Absolutely not!

 Next China bridge blog : Thur 10 July