View from City Road: Bridge too far for the Swedes?

Amid much dissension Sweden's coalition government pulled itself together for long enough yesterday to give the go-ahead to a combined road and rail bridge linking the country to Denmark.

At pounds 1.3bn, the 18-kilometre link complete with its own artificial island in the middle of the Strait of Oresund sounds like a bonanza for hard-up contractors. Among the bidders are Trafalgar House, Balfour Beatty and John Laing.

But the scheme is already being spoken of as an ecological disaster because of the threat it poses to wildlife in the Baltic.

Financial disaster surely cannot be far behind. A similar madcap scheme was proposed for the fixed Channel link by, among others, Trafalgar House.

The option that Britain and France plumped for in the end may be 100 per cent over budget, but the Channel tunnel will doubtless come to resemble a model of financial rectitude compared with what the Scandinavians are about to inflict on themselves.