Second Penang Bridge: how?

I was driving across the Penang Bridge at about 8.30am this morning at the unlikely speed of 80kph most of the way. A very smooth ride indeed. No congestion at the entry point except for a stupid bugger who briefly held up the Smart Tag lane with a weak battery. It was also a smooth flow on the bridge except to slow down at the mid-span.

But it's hardly like this everyday. Today was a REAL exception because normally, I would have to queue up at the Smart Tag lane (why don't Penang Bridge open up the adjacent line for the Smart Tag when they already have the equipment in place?), patiently squeeeeeze myself into the bottleneck in order to get onto the bridge and then go bumper-to-bumper until the exit points. That's my daily routine going to work and coming home.

While driving across the bridge this morning, I couldn't help reflecting on Anil Netto's blog the night before about the ballooning costs of building the second Penang Bridge. Let me just quote the relevant part of his story here (read Anil Netto here):

In April, we were told it would come to RM4.3 billion! (See 10 reasons why the second Penang bridge is not a great idea.)

Now we learn that that figure of RM4.3 billion does not include quite a few things:

Preliminary estimate of land acquisition - RM110 million (final estimate could be higher, no?)

Compensation to fish and cockle breeders - RM110 million

“Project development costs” (whatever that is) - RM285 million (apparently not yet finalised)

This brings us to a grand total of RM4.8 billion - and rising. There is also a kos variasi harga (Price variation cost? What is that?) - for which no figure was provided.

Now, what I believe is that RM4.8 billion will be a heavy price for Penangites to shoulder eventually. Not only will there be a heavy toll to use the second bridge, I'm sure the toll of the first bridge will be raised as well. And with the petrol subsidies going to be removed or adjusted and petrol prices set to increase by August this year, driving may well become a luxury.

Long time ago, I was thinking - mind you, this is just an ordinary layman thinking without considering any possible engineering or logistics or whatever problems - why do the authorities have to eye Batu Maung/Batu Kawan to build the second bridge?

Why couldn't they consider building the second bridge right next to the existing one? Make it a parallel bridge. Then the crossing will not be so long and we can make traffic flow uni-directional on the two bridges, one going to the island and the other going to the mainland. All the authorities have to do is to expand the infrastructure at both ends of the bridges to accommodate the increasing traffic. This may be a very simplistic suggestion but have they considered it? I'll be very surprised if they haven't but if they have, it'll be interesting to know why they think it will not work!