Lee said the Kinmen County Government began studying the possibility of building of a bridge between Kinmen and Xiamen in 2004 and has since proposed three different projects.
Plan A is a 10.3km bridge that would connect Wulongshan (五龍山) in Kinmen, to Jiaoyu (角嶼) and Xiaodeng islets (小嶝嶼) and on to Dadeng Island (大嶝島), which sits west-northwest of Xiamen Island and northeast of Kinmen.
Plan B, the Jindeng Bridge plan, would span 8.6km and directly connect Wulongshan and Dadeng Island.
Plan C is a 11.4km bridge between Wulongshan and Fujian Province’s Lianhe, which lies further north of Xiamen.
The costs of the three plans range from NT$12.7 billion (US$377.98 million) to NT$16.6 billion, Lee said.
Lee said Kinmen County prefers the second option because it is the most direct and the least costly.
If the bridge were built, it would take less than 30 minutes to drive from Kinmen to the island on which the center of Xiamen lies, by way of Dadeng, a land bridge to Xiangan north of Xiamen and then a tunnel currently under construction from Xiangan to Xiamen, Hsieh said.
A bridge would further tie the Taiwanese island to the major Chinese port city.
An increasing number of Kinmen youths have also chosen to attend schools in Xiamen rather than traveling to Taiwan proper for studies after the ferry service was opened.
Moreover, as their children went to Xiamen to get an education, parents in Kinmen began to purchase houses or invest in real estate in Xiamen.
Hsieh says the bridge would turn Kinmen into a Xiamen suburb, giving Kinmen residents more convenient links to the big city.
“A genuine one-day traffic zone between Kinmen and Xiamen would be created,” Hsieh said.
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