No particular insight here, but the bridges and the new roads are all part of the Chinese infrastructure initiative. Besides the new towns being built to replace old ones you also have whole road networks and bridges being built to connect the country.
The area where this bridge is consists of mountain after mountain and driving through theee giants is pretty impressive. Same goes for train routes: also over bridges over mountains, through mountains etc.
If you look left and right there are NO traditional old buildings, even though it is clearly rice and potatoe farmers you are looking at. And they all have new cars. Working the fields by hand but a car they have...
I don't think you can categorize each bridge for its commercial or strategic value. Before it took you X hours to get from location Y to Z now it is less. It's not about connecting two potatoe farmers it is about connecting the county and modernizing its infrastructure.
These bridges are almost always tolled on express ways. If the potato farmer below doesn't (or can't) pay the toll, then they aren't going to use the bridge. More to the point, this bridge is better for thru traffic and has very little to do with the potato farmer.
> "If you don’t build roads, there can’t be prosperity,” said Huang Sanliang, a 56-year-old farmer who lives under the bridge. “But this is an expressway, not a second- or third-grade road. One of those might be better for us here.”
Expressways are sexy and useful if you are driving thru. But...I have the feeling they are overbuilding it in many places while not caring much about the less sexy roads that might improve local lives more. But then, such roads would never be talked about abroad and wouldn't do much for China's prestige (and therefore the official's in charge promotion).
The cars on the expressway have little bearing on the farmers below it. A rice farmer isn't going to be driving a new Audi or even a Toyota, even in rich Zhejiang, but definitely not in guizhou or Hunan.
> If the potato farmer below doesn't (or can't) pay the toll, then they aren't going to use the bridge...A rice farmer isn't going to be driving a new Audi or even a Toyota
In the video, the farmer interviewed talks about walking 15 min across the new bridge instead of the old way of walking 4 hours on the mountain paths with 30-40 kg of potatoes. And even if it wasn't suitable for walking, 50 farmers together can load their sacks of potatoes into an old pickup truck, pay a driver, truck owner and the expressway toll, and still all be better off.
Even if it was intended mainly to improve long distance transport, what would be the point of pricing the local farmers out of using it? It's unlikely to be capacity constrained.
> Expressways are sexy and useful if you are driving thru. But...I have the feeling they are overbuilding it in many places while not caring much about the less sexy roads that might improve local lives more.
IMHO you're having this backward. Without the major infrastructure spearheading the development of this region, there won't be interest (money) to overhaul the local roads and bridges.
That remains to be seen. Right now china is neglecting less sexy infrastructure for more sexy infrastructure in a very centralized non market manner. That's why an ultra modern HSR can be flooded out whenever there is a bit of rain (billions for HSR, much less for basic draimage). Also the model that the expressways are being built (loans paid off with tolls), doesn't transfer at all to local roads and bridges.
The "New River Gorge Bridge was for many years the world's longest single-span arch bridge; it is now the third longest" is similarly in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia and was even more so when it was completed in 1977.
I don't think you can categorize each bridge for its commercial or strategic value. Before it took you X hours to get from location Y to Z now it is less. It's not about connecting two potatoe farmers it is about connecting the county and modernizing its infrastructure.