Island Notes: Bahamian Bridges
  
Tuesday, 22 November 2011 07:46

Since writing this article a contract has been signed to build a bridge between Little and Great Abaco Island and also create a port. This project will delay any thought of a direct Grand Bahama-Abaco connection (and having a port in eastern Grand Bahama to serve Abaco) but the idea of linking the two islands eventually still has validity in the long term.

BAHAMIAN BRIDGES  

The Grand Bahama – Abaco Bridge is an idea too controversial to digest at the moment though clearly it would have been very useful in moving people and materials between the two islands in the recent hurricane. You have not heard the last of this idea  - but let’s move on.
The Bahamas has many opportunities, imperatives almost, to connect islands together for a host of reasons to do with the greater public good. Besides the GB-AB link there other intra and inter-island links/bridges that are needed in the Bahamas as follows, (listed in approximately descending order of need):
  • a structure to span Hawksbill Creek in the Freeport Area
  • a bridge/causeway combination to link the disparate parts of Andros
  • a bridge between North with South Bimini
  • a bridge/causeway to connect two or more of the Ragged Islands together
  • a bridge/causeway between Crooked and Acklins Islands
  • another bridge to traverse the Grand Lucayan Waterway in Freeport
  • a bridge/causeway between Great Exuma and Long Island, and
  • a giant bridge/causeway link between New Providence and Eleuthera
  • and there are certainly others…
The construction of the first of these bridges could well be a prototype for other similar island-linking projects. All of the bridges listed traverse shallow water and so a standardized and economical structural design might be formulated. The reason to build bridges, almost any bridge, are the largely the same. They open up possibilities that isolationism denies.
• In the case of the Hawksbill Creek situation, it would guarantee that the western end of Grand Bahama would not be cut off from Freeport during hurricanes and high tides. It would also improve the traffic movement between east and west Grand Bahama.

• One respected Bahamian economist wrote: ‘linking the major islands through bridges, should forge closer ties between The Bahama Islands. It is an idea some critics have shot down, but I feel confident it could help the long-term economic situation in The Bahamas. These islands will not survive without more direct access. Building and other costs are higher because of their remoteness.’

• He might also have added that it gives residents and visitors more choices for work and recreation and, most important, the joined islands would benefit from scale economies and competition which might be evidenced in everything from the cost of daily necessities, to less expensive capital goods, to less costly governance.

• Another advantage is that it gives impetus to extending the electric power grid and telecommunication service to the joined islands. The islands could ‘share’ power in times of need and, as alluded to above, there would be scale economies that should lower the cost of services to the consumer. The possibility of sharing power (possibly derived from sustainable sources) between the islands might indeed be the primary catalyst for such projects to be realised.

• Then imaginative ‘overseas’ inter-island links might be a major tourist attractions much like the highway linking the Florida Keys. When this idea was first discussed with Alexis Nihon and Wallace Groves (two Bahamas-based visionary developers in the 1960’s), Nihon actually obtained publicity for the idea for the GB-AB bridge in European newspapers. One of the results of which was that cruise ship companies at that time asked to be informed of future developments since they saw quite clearly that this could possibly become the major tourist attraction of The Bahamas!

• Inter-island links would generate much employment in the region:
  • first, there would be many well-paying jobs directly created from the construction of the inter-island link
  • this would be followed by permanent employment of people involved in operating the link, together with service, maintenance, security personnel, and so on
  • if history is any guide, inevitably businesses will locate and thrive at either end of the bridge.
  • connecting the islands would give visitors more options to spend time in the Bahamas
  • the access opened up to the channels might also encourage entrepreneurs to look at the possibilities for marine research, fish farming, wind farms, generation of marine hydro power, and so on.

• Another persuasive argument for pursuing these projects would be that more development will result in the subject islands that in turn should encourage internal migration to the new communities that will be created. This in turn would help reduce the growing stress on urban services in New Providence by providing employment in the Family Islands. It would also aid the current ‘anchor’ projects to succeed.

• In tough economic times Keynesian economic theory suggests that the government should employ deficit spending to ‘pump prime’ the economy. There can be few better projects for such public sector investment than improving infra-structural projects like roads and bridges.

• Finally, unanticipated yet positive synergies would doubtless appear once the projects become reality. There is a truism that if you provide opportunities for growth, people will avail themselves of it.

It should be clear that the core message of this article is that a ‘bridge’ is a metaphor for making a ‘connection’ between islands in the same ‘family’ in both the physical and social sense of the word. Bridges create links, join communities, and invariably open up markets and encourage and enhance development and progress. Interestingly one never hears of a bridge being removed – except to be replaced with a larger one!

Island Notes is contributed by Peter Barratt, extracted from his new book: "FREEPORT NOTEBOOK”. This new book is, in some ways, supplementary to his other, better-known work, 'GRAND BAHAMA', a text that has gone through three editions and will shortly be published in a new edition.  He has some very interesting notes on the early history of Freeport but, he admits himself, he should have taken a correspondence course in poetry writing. Barratt's books are available in Grand Bahama at Oasis drug store, the Rand Nature Centre, Bahamian Tings and the Garden of the Groves shops. In Nassau his books are available at most bookshops on the island.

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