Asahi: Rainbow Bridge hangs too low for big ships
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... 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 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... 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"... 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...more...
