(Solved): It was not quite what the planne…

last three months of this year. The two governments, which paid nearly $2 billion for the 16km (10-mile) state-owned bridge-cumtunnel, reckoned that, above all, it would strengthen economic ties across the strait and create, within a few years, one of the fastest-growing and richest regions in Europe. But ministers on both sides of the water, especially in Sweden, have been getting edgy about the bridge’s teething problems. Last month Leif Pagrotsky, Sweden’s trade minister, called for a tariff review: the cost of driving over the bridge, at SKr255 ($26.40) each way, was too high to help integrate the region’s two bits. Businessmen have been complaining too.Novo Nordisk, a Danish drug firm which moved its Scandinavian marketing activities to Malmo to take advantage of ‘the bridge effect’, has been urging Danish staff to limit their trips to Malmo by working more from home. Ikea, a Swedish furniture chain with headquarters in Denmark, has banned its employees from using the bridge altogether when travelling on company business, and has told them to make their crossings –more cheaply if a lot more slowly – by ferry. The people managing the bridge consortium say they always expected a dip in car traffic from a summer peak of 20,000 vehicles a day. But they admit that the current daily flow of 6,000 vehicles or