Bridges

Typhoon Frank took a horrible toll in lives. The calamity devastated our crops. In addition, the storm took out a number of bridges, further widening our infrastructure gap.

From initial reports coming in, the storm washed away or weakened many existing concrete bridges, especially in badly-hit Panay island. Initial estimates indicate that as much as 10 kilometers of bridges have been knocked down or were seriously damaged by the latest calamity to hit us.

This might sound self-evident but it is a fact that has often been underappreciated: bridges are vital to the proper functioning of our economy. Without them, vast areas of the economy will be cut off. With them, vast tracts of previously unutilized agricultural land have been opened, freeing tens of thousands of families from poverty.

Our economy, even after the huge gains posted by the President’s Bridges Program launched during the Ramos years, still urgently needs about 15,000 more bridges. That translates into about 114 kilometers of bridge length.

Over a little more than a decade, the Bridges Program has resulted in the construction of about 1,500 bridges all over the archipelago. The construction of these bridges opened tens of thousands of hectares of new agricultural land that were inaccessible before the bridges were built. They have facilitated access to the market for hundreds of thousands of our rural poor.

I played a minor role in the negotiations for soft loans from the European Community to finance the Bridges Program during the Ramos administration. That albeit minor role enabled me to gain some insight into the engineering aspect as well as the economic considerations underpinning the bridges program.

The Bridges Program uses pre-fabricated steel bridges produced, in the first phase, by a British company and currently by a French firm. Each bridge is uniquely constructed, based on the specifications of each location. The parts are manufactured abroad and assembled on site, often in less than a month. This involves state-of-the-art bridge technology developed by some of the most respected engineering firms in Europe.

Decisions on where the bridges should be deployed and which ones will come ahead of the others are made by the NEDA Investments Coordinating Committee. This ensures that the economic implications of deploying these bridges are expertly considered.

None of the bridges taken down by the last storm were part of the Bridges Program. What were taken down were bridges built using old technology — even if some of them were only freshly built. They were made of concrete, which in the cases of those taken down, proved brittle in the face of pressure from a raging river or surging floodwaters.

I do not have technical evidence at hand, but it is entirely possible that the bridges that collapsed were built with sloppy engineering or substandard materials. The traditional concrete bridges were, after all, constructed using the traditional contracting process that was vulnerable to rigged bidding and kickbacks.

This is not mentioning the normally unpredictable payments schedule that adds to the uncertainties of contracting companies that adds to their financing costs and tempts them into cutting corners in the infrastructure they build. Financing costs are often the most uncertain aspect contractors deal with when they accept government projects.

Even if we take corruption costs out of the equation, the uncertainty of when projects will be eventually paid encourages substandard infrastructure to be built. Financing costs arising from uncertainty about the date of payment often causes public works projects to be inflated.

The sad fact is: corruption costs are almost always part of the equation. The threat to public safety is certainly minimized by purchasing complete steel bridge packages under the terms of official development assistance programs.

It is easy to overlook the aspects of durability and public safety when comparing the costs of building the necessary bridges. It is even easier to overlook the financing costs of acquiring these vital pieces of infrastructure. On a soft loan acquired through official development assistance, financing costs for the Bridges Program are certainly lower than, say, commercial loans acquired by local governments from commercial sources.

Both the engineering and financing aspects of the program ought to be carefully examined when examining the public investment decisions made as regards the provision of vital infrastructure.

For instance, sometime ago one senator teased the public with dramatic pictures of some of the bridges built under the program, showing them without roads leading to them. While the pictures were dramatic, they were also inaccurate. It is difficult to goad local governments to do their part building the connecting roads if the bridges do not yet exist. Conversely, local communities have built connecting roads even by bare hands when the bridges are present.

The whole program relies on counterpart contributions from local communities who will own the infrastructure. This is much like what is called “sweat equity” in the housing programs of Habitat or Gawad Kalinga.

Too, some criticism has been aired of late erroneously comparing the costs of the steel bridges with structures built by local contractors. The comparison is erroneous because the costing of concrete bridges built by local contractors often exclude the decks of bridges which often accounts for up to 35% of the project cost or the substructure and approaches which could account for up to 40% of project cost.

The steel spans built under the Bridges Program are presented in terms the total project costs.

Look at the bridges that survived Typhoon Frank and those that did not. That should say it all.