AZE.US
A bridge across Baku Bay is often presented as an appealing idea that could shorten travel times and reduce pressure on the city center, but experts say the project is unlikely to offer a real answer to Baku’s traffic problems.
The concept has been discussed for years because it seems to promise a direct link between opposite sides of the bay, sparing drivers from long detours and daily congestion. For many residents, such a crossing sounds like more than just a major infrastructure project – it sounds like a way to get back hours lost in traffic.
But specialists say the biggest problem is not the visual scale of the idea, but Baku’s climate. Strong winds in the bay area remain one of the main technical and economic obstacles. Under such conditions, traffic on the bridge could have to be suspended for safety reasons on particularly windy days, which would immediately raise questions about reliability and commercial viability.
That issue reportedly helped derail earlier discussions around the project. At one stage, a concession model was considered under which the bridge could have been built without direct budget spending, but the state would still have had to guarantee a certain level of vehicle flow. If the bridge then had to stand partly idle because of weather conditions, the economics of the project would quickly come under pressure.
Experts also note that Baku’s urban growth pattern does not favor such an investment as strongly as it may seem at first glance. The city’s main expansion and traffic flows are moving more toward the northwest rather than in the direction where a bay bridge would deliver the biggest benefit.
For that reason, analysts say Baku is more likely to make real progress against congestion through alternative roads, interchanges and upgrades to public transport than through a headline-grabbing bridge across the sea.