[Capitalist]

Dismantling the Sydney Harbour Bridge and floating in a new double-deck version built overseas sounds like a plan hatched over beers at the pub. But one man says it should be reality.

Former federal Liberal MP Ross Cameron approached the state government with the radical proposal, which he says would solve Sydney's worst transit ''choke point''.

Even better, it could be built using Chinese labour, at a fraction of the cost of the proposed $10 billion second harbour rail crossing, Mr Cameron says.

"If you left [the bridge] it would get increasingly dangerous and more bits of it will start falling off," he said, referring to an incident in March when loose metal plates caused commuter chaos.

The bridge "needs three times as much rail capability and twice as much road capability".

He would seek to form a public-private partnership.

It forms part of a grander plan, rejected by the state government last November, to build the M4 East motorway in exchange for the rights to develop the rail corridor between Central and Strathfield. Thousands of international workers would rebuild kilometres of rail lines underground and assemble at least 150 skyscrapers, prefabricated in China. Materials would be moved to the construction site on overhead conveyor belts from a new port near Glebe.

Mr Cameron would also turn historic Fort Denison into a cruise passenger terminal, connected to the mainland via a tunnel.

The former Macquarie banker wants the government to fully evaluate the proposal.

He says he met NSW's top transport bureaucrat Les Wielinga, who asked him to "please include the bridge" when he submitted the plans. A consortium known as Aspire Sydney would procure a new two-deck bridge from an overseas manufacturer before floating it "whole or in pieces to Sydney Harbour".

A spokesman for Mr Wielinga said he advised Mr Cameron to lodge the plan as an unsolicited proposal "if he felt it had promise". The Premier's Department rejected the Aspire Sydney proposal, saying it "did not present a commercial or financial proposition for [the] government to consider."

Source

Sounds like a good idea but I wonder if the bridge is in such a state that it needs to be rebuilt. Also, why do older iconic bridges, such as Brooklyn Bridge or Tower Bridge, negate the need to be rebuilt, is it because they are mainly built of stone?

[AFAIK]

Sounds like a good idea but I wonder if the bridge is in such a state that it needs to be rebuilt. Also, why do older iconic bridges, such as Brooklyn Bridge or Tower Bridge, negate the need to be rebuilt, is it because they are mainly built of stone?

The article put emphasis on increasing capacity. Some bridges can have additional decks added to them, the Thames is narrow so it's cheap to build other crossings.

Maintenance negates the need for rebuilds.