A bridge too far? The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and economic and regional restructuring in China's Pearl River Delta region

The longest combined bridge and undersea tunnel structure in the world, the 55-kilometer Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HKZMB) connects Hong Kong's Lantau Island and Chek Lap Kok International Airport in the east to the industrial city of Zhuhai in Guangdong Province in the west. A side spur at the HKZMB's western end connects to the island of Macau, the highest revenue gambling center in the world. Funding for the HKZMB took an unconventional tri-partite form. The Hong Kong government paid for the Bridge's Hong Kong access road, the governments of Zhuhai and Macau paid for the Zhuhai access road, and all three cities plus the Chinese government split the cost of building the main bridge section. With a final construction cost of 127 billion RMB (US$ 19.1 billion), the HKZMB ran US$ 7.7 billion over its initial budget allocation. Originally scheduled for completion in late-2016, the HKZMB finally opened to commercial traffic in October 2018. Initially forecast to attract between 9,200 and 14,000 vehicles per day, average daily vehicle flows in the month after the Bridge opened barely exceeded 2,200 vehicles, a stunning shortfall in demand. A year later, average daily traffic volumes had increased to just 4,200 vehicles per day. Thus far into its still-brief history, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge offers four important lessons for planners of large and costly transportation megaprojects: (i) During the project planning and feasibility phase, planners should focus on the robustness of the assumptions behind their projections rather than just the numbers; (ii) Undertaking scenario and sensitivity analysis during the planning and feasibility phase can help identify critical project vulnerabilities; (iii) Open-sea and deep-water bridges involve unique engineering and construction challenges which typically reduce scale-related efficiencies; and (iv) When megaprojects grossly underperform in terms of revenues, complicated multi-party financing consortiums quickly become problematic.