The True Cost of Bridges

Friction may be a problem, but it prevents things from slipping away

Imagine you live on an island. Three hundred people, say. A beautiful place, with history and community. (You live there for a reason.) But it’s tough.

Money is scarce. Supplies have to be transported by boat, making them more expensive than on the mainland. Most enterprises can only serve local customers, so they can’t grow very large or hire from a big pool of talent. Some people commute to the mainland to find work, spending time and money on transport. The tiny Post Office sells a few stamps a day, and packets of HobNobs. The grocery shop has a small, expensive stock of wilting vegetables. Staffing the school is a nightmare.

Then one day, a bridge is built, and everyone celebrates. A frictionless future awaits.

Now it’s easier for people to go to the mainland for work or leisure, whenever they like, for free. So they do. The free market opens its doors, and competition kicks in.

The ferry is scrapped immediately, and its crew move away to find work on a bigger boat. On shore, the first business to go is the Post Office, then the grocery shop. Funding is found for a community buyout (based on a shakey business plan, rubber-stamped a hundred miles away by the area authority amid a storm of optimism for local enterprise – now that the island has a bridge). But now that the islanders can drive to a supermarket, the local shop’s viability is a fantasy, and it goes under again.

It’s not all bad. Ambulances get here quicker now. Building firms from the mainland can commit to big projects without having to account for ferry travel. And a few dull but stable jobs are created when a multinational corporation buys the defunct ferry terminal and converts it into a factory.

Efficiencies gain momentum, unchecked. The island still needs its fire engine, but now it has to serve the town on the other side of the bridge too. The school stops taking new pupils and closes after its last cohort graduates; the larger school on the mainland absorbs the island’s few dozen kids, who now have to get on a bus twice a day.

More tourists come now, for the scenery, and to ponder the echoes of how life used to be. Some buy houses here using money they earned in cities hundreds of miles away. Property prices rise. And gradually, reluctantly, the families who lived on the island for generations begin to drift away.

Still, everyone is grateful for the bridge.