'The troll says we can’t afford to build a bridge to France? What if we can’t afford not to build one?'

By Douglas Kruger

WE all get the basic picture. Instead of being forever beholden to unreliable ferries, or to flights that can be turned back in the event of wind, rain, mist, the planetary magnetism of Jupiter, or the wrong contestant being expelled from Love Island, you would simply drive. Hop on an offramp at Saint Malo, then enjoy the lovely ocean views, as you cruise a highway to the Channel Islands. Easy.

More to the point, cruising the several lanes beside you are delivery trucks, construction lorries, day workers and tourists. And heading in the other direction are Islanders who don’t believe in being held hostage to a cost-of-living crisis that can be solved with increased competition.

Trouble is, we also know that it’s hideously expensive. But I wonder if we aren’t studying the wrong side of a scary number. Do the numbers on the other side of the mountain outweigh the one on which we’re so fixated?

All infrastructural projects must do this one thing: bring in more than they cost. That’s it. If they do, it’s worth it. And perhaps the biggest troll guarding the possibility of our bridge lies in our looking at the budget based solely upon our current economic reality, not the dramatically altered economic reality that might result after doing it.

So, here is a new line of inquiry for the Island: What are the costs of NOT doing it? How much do we forfeit, year after year, across a variety of sectors? How much cost is added to every delivery, every service, every basic need, because we cannot simply or cheaply acquire it from a great big land mass, situated no more than 14 miles away?

Let’s ask the question from a bigger perspective: how much extra have we paid over the past hundred years when importing goods and labour? I bet that’s a scarier number than the one we’re looking at. Or even worse: how much extra will we pay over the next century? What is the added financial burden upon everything, tallied up? Are we okay with that? No doubt, these (hidden) numbers, which are built into the fabric of our lives and which we’ve become accustomed to paying, are gigantic in the aggregate.

Take one small example. Our news recently featured an item about a man who had a knee replacement in France. It cost him less than two knee replacements here. It also cost him less waiting time.

So, the total burden should be measured not just in direct financial cost. “Reduced waiting time” also equates to “increased productivity”. How much of that are we losing, person by person, procedure by procedure, repair by agonisingly slow repair? How much money are we needlessly haemorrhaging, when building takes years rather than months? How much faster could our economy move and, as a consequence, how much bigger could it be? Have we tacitly accepted that we’ll never know?

Think of this in the simplest possible terms. Imagine it takes four years to do a project, whatever it may be. If we could cut that time down to two years, then that part of our economy would move at twice the speed. That’s twice the revenue. And say the project is setting up a new office. Twice the speed means a halving of time until productive work can be done there, and that means more revenue too. The effect of a faster moving economy can become exponential.

There is another cost beyond the financial, and it is one of insecurity. We might describe it as the geographically imposed cost of being a first-world nation with third-world waiting times. That applies to everything: basic services; essential repairs; the acquisition of labour. And it’s not that these resources aren’t immediately available all around us. It’s just that they can’t get here. That’s silly.

Finally, we must bear in mind that these costs, and these missed opportunities, aren’t static. They will necessarily escalate. Every year, we cram several thousand new people onto the Island. That means more appointments, more replacements, more construction. More of everything. And we can’t currently service demand to adequate levels. The problem must get worse, as a numerical certainty. So, how much longer will we leave it unresolved?

If we have the courage to face the issue head on, I believe we’ll conclude that there is no scenario in which another century can reasonably pass without a roadway to the mainland. It’s 50 years overdue, and growing more urgent.

So, what of the troll? How might we address the problem of cost?

There must be a score of lateral solutions. Here are six suggestions:

• Put it out to tender: ‘Build us a bridge, and you can take tolls on it for 50 years.’ Are there not nations with the resources to view that as a good deal?

• Chat with Charles. We are a Crown protectorate. Britain’s purse is a tad weightier than ours. We don’t pay tax directly to them, but in the matter of this bridge exclusively, could we? For a time? Are there even strategic reasons why such infrastructure might serve Britain as a whole and, if so, could we make that argument?

• Ask Charles to go halvies. Offer a hundred-year lease to a third party, with ten per cent to government.

• Don’t raise money. Offer tax incentives instead. We have the capacity to offer massive tax incentives to firms operating here. Would more of them care for a piece of that? How about irresistibly special terms for multinationals who contribute toward construction? Could we structure a deal spread over several brand giants, and/or, a hundred smaller firms? Effectively let them fund there way over here, in such a way that’s it worth it to them?

• Copy and paste. It is expensive to build in Europe, if you build LIKE Europe. What if we sent some highly intelligent people to study brilliant engineering solutions abroad, and find out how small but dynamic economies are using the latest tech and funding solutions to solve their infrastructure needs? Then do likewise. Tech moves at such a pace that there may be answers out there we aren’t even aware of.

• Could someone in government marry a sheikh?

There must be a way to get it done. It needs to be done. It would change the way we live here, making everything we need immediately available all the time, and at reduced prices. It would also reduce waiting times, assuage insecurity, gut our record-high costs, and energise the place like nothing the Island has seen before. The tourist boom alone would be staggering, but that’s not even the biggest financial incentive at play here.

So, sure, it’s a scary looking bridge troll. But it’s only a bridge troll. At the end of the day, they’ve been defeated before. Maybe it’s time.

• Douglas Kruger lives in St Helier, where his seven-year-old son exposes him to long lectures about dinosaurs every blessed day. He also writes books. They’re available from Amazon and Audible.