...Unless you block it with a bridge. Rainbow Bridge hangs too low for big ships 02/21/2008 BY JUNICHI BEKKU, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN The Tokyo metropolitan government has given up trying to woo the Queen Elizabeth 2 and other large luxury passenger ships to its port after realizing that the clearance of Rainbow Bridge is too low. It will go after easier targets instead. The government plans to earmark about 10 million yen in the fiscal 2008 budget for measures to bring in midsize passenger boats, officials said. The Tokyo metropolitan government had the QE2 in mind when it built the 9.1-billion-yen Harumi terminal in 1991 as Tokyo's only pier for international liners. But the ship has never called at the port since the Rainbow Bridge, a 918-meter-long suspension bridge, was completed in 1993. The government believed that if large luxury passenger ships visited Tokyo as part of their cruises, it would help promote tourism and produce significant economic effects. The bridge girder was set at 52 meters because the height of its towers was restricted under the aviation law to ensure the safety of aircraft that use the nearby Haneda Airport. The girder is about the same as the height above the waterline of the 70,000-ton QE2. The metropolitan government's Bureau of Port and Harbor said the QE2 would be able to narrowly pass under the bridge at low tide or if the upper part of its mainmast was temporarily detached. A former metropolitan government official said the government, without substantial reasoning, had expected the QE2 to call at the Tokyo port when the bridge was built. But a representative at the domestic agent for the QE2 owner, Cunard Line, said, "We cannot run the risk of damaging the ship." All the ships that dock at the Harumi pier must pass under the bridge, which links the Shibaura district with the Odaiba waterfront area. To make matters worse, some new luxury passenger ships are getting larger and taller. The 150,000-ton Queen Mary 2, which was commissioned in 2004, stretches 62 meters above the waterline, while the 120,000-ton Sapphire Princess, which was built in the same year, is 54 meters tall. "As an international port, the Tokyo port has been left behind altogether," the president of a Tokyo travel agency specializing in cruises said. "Most luxury passenger ships have a tonnage of more than 100,000 tons." Tokyo has been overtaken by Yokohama in terms of the number of visits by foreign passenger ships. In 2006, only 10 foreign passenger ships visited the Tokyo port, less than half of 22 in 2001. The number of visits at the Yokohama port surged to 13, up from four in 2001. Large suspension bridges elsewhere in Japan were designed for the QE2 to comfortably pass under them. The Yokohama Bay Bridge, completed in 1989, has a clearance of 56 meters between its girder and the sea surface. The clearance is up to about 80 meters at the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, which links Kobe and Awajishima island, and the Seto-Ohashi Bridge, which consists of six bridges that connect the Honshu mainland and Shikoku.(IHT/Asahi: February 21,2008)
