Just thirteen days after the world rejoiced at the idea of the world’s highest and longest glass bridge in China’s Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon, designed by Israeli architect Haim Dotan, comprised of a steel frame with glass panels that offer dizzying views of the ground below, has shut down as it could not take the immense amount of visitors which were way beyond what the managers expected.
“The bridge is undergoing an internal system upgrade”, the officials told the Xinhua News.
The 20-foot-wide bridge was designed to accommodate up to 800 people at one time — or 8,000 visitors in one day, while the bridge received about 10 times more people than its capacity each day.
As per reports, not a lot of damage has been caused to the bridge and the bridge was accident- and crack-free during its first two weeks.
Why do you think it happened?
Was it the carelessness of the designer or the construction workers or just the management responsible for handling people?
Well, for the most part, it is an immense fault of the visitors. We want to do every single thing as soon as we can. (Patience, erm, what?) Only if people thought about the fact that a glass bridge, however toughened they could make it, would still be glass. The need to experience everything ahead of others might be the biggest cause of this shutdown. The managers should have had stricter policies too. If you build something, you ought to maintain it, don’t you think?
But, we do not know the whole story.
All that we are aware is that nobody is sure if the magnificent bridge, which was on its way to become the top tourist spots in China, would reopen any time soon. Adding to the misery of the tourists, Haim Dotan has also preferred to remain silent on this topic.
As reported by CNN, “fixes would include improved infrastructure around the bridge including new parking lots to accommodate larger crowds and a new ticketing system”. It is yet now defined when the bridge, which made a point of banning visitors from wielding selfie sticks and was to eventually include a bungee-jumping component, will open for visitors once again.
Let’s just hope that the bridge is fixed soon with new facilities for people who are eager (right now disappointed) to visit it!
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