Mabinogion - Pont Bendigeidfran

Welsh General / Questions
1

Has anyone seen this response to the consultation on the new Menai crossing?

WG consultation document

twitdoc.com/9OBL

It would be a great opportunity to promote Welsh culture!

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2

Interesting, as I love bridges.

3

As I live in Caernarfon and work in Holyhead, I spend a lot of time crossing the bridges.
The old Telford Menai bridge is beautiful but was never intended to support the level of traffic we have. The ‘new’ Britannia Bridge - a road bridge using the infrastructure of the railway bridge - gets clogged at peak times and is frequently closed to lorries, caravans, etc. when the wind sweeps along the Straits.
I’m not convinved by any of the proposals really. And I agree that there is a real risk of spoiling the beauty of the area. I thought they might have considered a tunnel.

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4

Yes, I can see the danger of “clogging” the view with too many bridges. If one is needed, hopefully it will blend in.

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5

I think that is a brilliant idea! If you can have one between England and France and part of the way between Denmark and Sweden, surely it should be possible to cross the Menai Straits?

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6

I thought what!!!
Then I looked it up. Amazing.

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7

I asked them this exact question!

The bridge land is around 40m up from the water on either side of the straits here, and the highest suitable rock to tunnel through is around 30m below the waterline, so any tunnel would need to drop down 70m to get under the straits! They said they’d have to take the tunnel entrance back to around Tesco on the mainland side and a good stretch into Anglesey, so instead of it being around £150 to build a bridge, it would cost nearly a billion to cut a tunnel! :0

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8

Oh and they said the straits sits over a seismic fault, which would make building a tunnel ‘a bit dodgy’!

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9

Yes, I see. Mmm…thinks…cables can go to USA I guess bridging Trench. I can see putting a plastic, train-sized tube through the water with supports over the fault would be pretty hard, but I can’t help thinking… :bulb:

10

Thanks @JoeEbbwVale - I suspected that the geology would be the issue (although they did tunnel under the R Conwy to avoid a third bridge…)

Of course, environmental issues aside, they could have put a bridge to the west Caernarfon - Newborough. It’d knock 20 minutes off my work journey! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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