It was a reminder of other changes as well: the demolition and reef building will cost at least $16 million, five times more than it cost to build the bridge in 1940.
Last year, the catchphrase was "Build the Bridge".
You have to have a reason to build the bridge, he said.
Did President Clinton build the "bridge to the twenty-first century" all by himself?
"We're not under a lot of pressure to build the bridge," he said.
Rowling, who helped to build the bridge, is walking in the opposite direction.
It took 11 months to build the bridge the first time.
"We'd rather have somebody else build the bridge, and then we'll own the toll business".
The money to build the bridge had been borrowed, she told me, and that had to be paid back.
The Muslim community is being asked, demanded even, to build the bridge all the way through to the other shore.
Faced with the prospect of an interminable legal wrangle between the two groups, the state government said last month that it would build the bridge itself.
