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Why Bridges? I have always loved bridges. With a fascination for the architectural and engineering feats, an appreciation for the aesthetic design, and a profound sense of symbolic attraction to the idea of a bridge (bringing together two separate and opposing entities), I couldn’t help but make this book about bridges. I had a terribly difficult time choosing which bridges to allow an appearance in my book, but as a native San Franciscan, I knew I had to include the Golden Gate. Researching the Golden Gate led me to the fun fact that it is widely considered the most photographed bridge in the world, which gave me the idea of selecting the rest of my bridges by superlatives and Guiness World Records. In this book you will find the longest, oldest, heaviest, most photographed, most used, tallest, worst, widest, longest fountain, and most unique bridges in the world. In my opinion, bridges are incredibly multidimensional. I hope that even a quick peek at a few of the world’s superlative bridges will make you see the architectural, engineering, design, historical and conceptual excellence of these bridges -- in other words, why these bridges are wonders of my world.
- Erika Marie Johnson
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Longest Bridge 102.4 miles long
Name: Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge Year Opened: 2011 Designed By: Cole Eckardt Place: China between Shanghai and Nanjing The Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge is the world’s longest bridge. It is a 102.4 mile (164.8 km) long viaduct on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway. There is a 5.6 mile (9 km) section over open water across Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou. The bridge averages about 100 feet (31 m) off the ground. The bridge is located on the rail line between Shanghai and Nanjing in East China’s Jiangsu province. It is in the Yangtze River Delta where the geography is characterized by rice paddies, canals, rivers and lakes.
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The bridge runs roughly parallel to the Yangtze River, about 5 to 50 miles south of the river. It passes through the northern edges of population centers (from west to east) beginning in Danyang, Changzhou, Wuxi, Suzhou and ending in Kunshan. It was completed in 2010 and opened in 2011. Employing 10,000 people, construction took 4 years and cost about $8.5 billion. It currently holds the Guinness World Record for the longest bridge in the world in any category as of June 2011.
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At first glance, there’s nothing remarkable about this bridge. The arched stone slab straddling the River Meles, in Izmir, Turkey, extends only 42.5 feet and is about as simple as they come. But it’s the age, not the physical aspects, of the Caravan that sets it apart. Built in 850 B.C., the bridge is 2,864 years old and has reportedly been crossed by the likes of Homer and Saint Paul. The River Meles became also known as the “Caravan Bridge Brook”.
Celebrated in literature, the Caravan Bridge checked the entry into the city of Izmir throughout the 19th century. As impressive as some of the other bridges in this book are, it’s hard to imagine they’ll last even half that long.
Oldest Bridge
Built in 850 B.C.
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Name: Caravan Bridge Year Opened: 850 B.C. Designed By: Unknown Place: Izmir, Turkey
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Heaviest Bridge 42,000 tons
The Portage Lake Lift Bridge (officially the Houghton– Hancock Bridge) connects the cities of Hancock and Houghton, in the US state of Michigan, across Portage Lake, a portion of the waterway which cuts across the Keweenaw Peninsula with a canal linking the final several miles to Lake Superior to the northwest. US Highway 41 and M-26 are both routed across the bridge. It is the only land-based link between the north (so-called Copper Island) and south sections of the Keweenaw peninsula.
Name: Portage Lake Lift Bridge Year Opened: 1959 Designed By: American Bridge Co. Place: Hancock, Michigan
The original bridge on the same site was a wooden swing bridge built in 1875. The bridge was built by James P. Edward of Fox and Howard Inc. of Chicago. Three local men raised $47,000 in stocks for the toll bridge. Construction began in the spring of 1875 and was finished in the spring of 1876. This was replaced by a steel swing bridge, the Portage Canal Swing Bridge, built by the King Bridge Company in 1901. The Portage Canal Swing Bridge was damaged when a ship, the Northern Wave, collided with it in 1905. The center swinging section of the bridge was replaced and a similar incident almost occurred again in 1920, but the ship was able to stop by dropping its anchor, which snagged on the bottom of the lake. In 1959, the Portage Canal Swing Bridge was replaced, at a cost of about 11-13 million US dollars (sources vary), by the current bridge which was built by the American Bridge Company. This moveable bridge is a lift bridge with the middle section capable of being lifted from its low point of four feet clearance over the water to a clearance of 100 feet (30 m) to allow boats to pass underneath. The bridge is the world’s heaviest and widest double-decked vertical-lift bridge. More than 35,000 tons of concrete and 7,000 tons of steel went into the bridge, which replaced the narrow 54-year old swing bridge, declared a menace to navigation on the busy Keweenaw Waterway. Its center span “lifts” to provide 100 feet (30 m) of clearance for ships.
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Hancock and Houghton hold an annual celebration called Bridgefest to commemorate the opening of the bridge which united their two communities.
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Most Photographed Bridge Billions of photographs The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, the mile-wide, three-mile-long channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to Marin County, bridging both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco, California, and the United States. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The Frommers travel guide considers the Golden Gate Bridge “possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world�. It opened in 1937 and was, until 1964, the longest suspensionbridge main span in the world, at 4,200 feet.
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Name: Golden Gate Bridge Year Opened: 1937 Designed By: Strauss, Morrow & Ellis Place: San Francisco, California Irving Morrow, a relatively unknown residential architect, designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme, and Art Deco elements, such as the tower decorations, streetlights, railing, and walkways. The famous International Orange color was originally used as a sealant for the bridge. Construction began on January 5, 1933. The project cost over $35 million, completing ahead of schedule and under budget. The bridge-opening celebration began on May 27, 1937 and lasted for one week.
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Most Used Bridge 102 million vehicles/year
The George Washington Bridge – known informally as the GW Bridge, the GWB, the GW, or the George – is a double-decked suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River, connecting the Washington Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City to Fort Lee, Bergen County, New Jersey, in the United States. Interstate 95 (I-95) and U.S. Route 1/9 (US 1/9) cross the river via the bridge. The New Jersey Turnpike (part of I-95) and US 46, which lie entirely within New Jersey, end halfway across the bridge at the state border with New York. At its eastern terminus in New York City, the bridge connects with the Trans-Manhattan Expressway. The bridge, an integral conduit within the New York metropolitan area, has an upper level that carries four lanes in each direction and a lower level with three lanes in each direction, for a total of 14 lanes of travel. The speed limit on the bridge is 45 mph (72 km/h), though congestion often slows traffic, especially during the morning and evening
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Name: Washington Bridge Year Opened: 1931 Designed By: Ammann & Gilbert Place: New York-New Jersey
rush hours. The bridge’s upper level carries pedestrian and bicycle traffic. As of 2013, the George Washington Bridge carries about 102 million vehicles per year, making it the world’s busiest motor vehicle bridge, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the bi-state government agency that owns and operates several area bridges, tunnels, and airports. Several times a year, the bridge flies the largest free-flying American flag in the world; 90 ft long and 60 ft wide, it is flown on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day, as well as dates honoring those lost in the 9/11 attacks. The bridge was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers on October 24, 1981, the 50th anniversary of the bridge’s dedication ceremony.
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The Millau Viaduct is a cable-stayed bridge that spans the valley of the River Tarn near Millau in southern France. Designed by the French structural engineer Michel Virlogeux and British architect Norman Foster, it is the tallest bridge in the world with one mast’s summit at 1,125 ft (343 m) above the base of the structure. In 1995, the government issued a declaration to solicit design approaches for a competition. In 1996, the solution of a cable-stayed bridge, presented by the structural engineering group Sogelerg, Europe Etudes Gecti and Serf and the architects Foster + Partners was declared the best.
It was formally inaugurated on December 14, 2004, and opened to traffic on December 16. The bridge has been consistently ranked as one of the great engineering achievements of all time. The bridge received the 2006 International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering Outstanding Structure Award.
Tallest Bridge
1,125 feet tall
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Name: Millau Viaduct Year Opened: 2004 Designed By: Foster & Partners Place: Millau, France
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Worst Bridge
Dramatically collapsed The 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, was a suspension bridge in the U.S. state of Washington that spanned the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula. It opened to traffic on July 1, 1940, and dramatically collapsed into Puget Sound on November 7 of the same year. At the time of its construction (and its destruction), the bridge was the third longest suspension bridge in the world in terms of main span length, behind the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge.
Name: Tacoma Narrows Bridge Year Opened: 1940 Designed By: Washington State Place: Tacoma, Washington
Construction on the bridge began in September 1938. From the time the deck was built, it began to move vertically in windy conditions, which led to construction workers giving the bridge the nickname Galloping Gertie. The motion was observed even when the bridge opened to the public. Several measures aimed at stopping the motion were ineffective, and the bridge’s main span finally collapsed under 40-mile-per-hour (64 km/h) wind conditions the morning of November 7, 1940, because of a physical phenomenon known as aeroelastic flutter. No human life was lost in the collapse of the bridge. Tubby, a black male cocker spaniel, was the only fatality of the disaster. Following the collapse, the United States’ involvement in World War II delayed plans to replace the bridge. The portions of the bridge still standing after the collapse, including the towers and cables, were dismantled and sold as scrap metal. Nearly 10 years after the bridge collapsed, a new Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened in the same location, using the original bridge’s tower pedestals and cable anchorages. The portion of the bridge that fell into the water now serves as an artificial reef. The bridge’s collapse had a lasting effect on science and engineering. In many physics textbooks, the event is presented as an example of elementary forced resonance with the wind providing an external periodic frequency that matched the bridge’s natural structural frequency, though the actual cause of failure was aeroelastic flutter. Its failure also boosted research in the field of bridge aerodynamics-aeroelastics, the study of which has influenced the designs of all the world’s long-span bridges built since 1940.
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The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge (known locally as the Bay Bridge) is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 240,000 vehicles a day on its two decks. The bridge has two sections of roughly equal length; the older western section connects downtown San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island and the newer eastern section connects the island to Oakland. During the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, a section of the eastern section’s upper deck collapsed onto the lower deck and the bridge was closed for a month.
Reconstruction of the eastern section of the bridge as a causeway connected to a self-anchored suspension bridge began in 2002; the new bridge opened September 2, 2013 at a reported cost of over $6.5 billion and is currently the world’s widest bridge, according to Guinness World Records.
Widest Bridge
57.5 feet wide
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Name: SF-Oakland Bay Bridge Year Opened: 1936, 2013 Designed By: Charles H. Purcell Place: SF-Oakland, California
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Longest Fountain Bridge 3,740 feet long
The Moonlight Rainbow Fountain is the world’s longest bridge fountain that set a Guinness World Record with nearly 10,000 LED nozzles that run along both sides that is 1,140m long, shooting out 190 tons of water per minute.
Name: Banpo Bridge / Rainbow Fountain Year Opened: 1982 Designed By: Dae Han Consultants Co. Place: Seoul, South Korea
Installed in September 2009 on the Banpo Bridge, former mayor of Seoul Oh Se-hoon declared that the bridge will further beautify the city and showcase Seoul’s eco-friendliness, as the water is pumped directly from the river itself and continuously recycled.
The Banpo Bridge is a major bridge in downtown Seoul over the Han River, South Korea, connecting the Seocho and Yongsan districts. The bridge is on top of Jamsu Bridge, forming the upper half of a double-deck bridge; it is the first double deck bridge built in South Korea. During periods of high rainfall, the Jamsu Bridge is designed to submerge as the water level of the river rises, as the lower deck lies close to the waterline. The bridge was built as a girder bridge and was completed in 1982.
The bridge has 38 water pumps and 380 nozzles on either side, which draw 190 tons of water per minute from the river 20 meters below the deck, and shoots as far as 43 meters horizontally.
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Most Unique Bridge
Unfolds every Friday at noon
The Rolling Bridge is a type of curling movable bridge completed in 2004 as part of the Grand Union Canal office & retail development project at Paddington Basin, London. Despite the connotation of its name, it is more accurately described as “curling”. The Rolling Bridge unfolds across Grand Union Canal every Friday at noon. The Rolling Bridge was conceived by British designer Thomas Heatherwick, designed by SKM Anthony Hunt with Packman Lucas, and built by Littlehampton Welding Ltd. The Hydraulic design and development was done by Primary Fluid Power Ltd in the North West. The bridge consists of eight triangular sections hinged at the walkway level and connected above by two-part links that can be collapsed towards the deck by hydraulic cyl-
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Name: Rolling Bridge Year Opened: 2004 Designed By: Hunt, Lucas & Heatherwick Place: London, England
inders, which are concealed in vertical posts in the bridge parapets. When extended, it resembles a conventional steel and timber footbridge, and is 12 metres long. To allow the passage of boats, the hydraulic pistons are activated and the bridge curls up until its two ends join, to form an octagonal shape measuring one half of the waterway’s width at that point. The maintenance and opening of the bridge is managed by Merchant Square Estates and it is up every Friday at noon. Following on from the maintenance issues in 2008, the bridge has been repaired and was fully operational from April 2009. In 2005, the bridge won the British Structural Steel Design Award.
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About the Designer Name: Erika Marie Johnson Place: Los Angeles, California Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, I am a third-year undergraduate computer science student minoring in design at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Although I have parallel passions in widely unrelated disciplines, I spend the majority of my time on the “bridge� between humans and tech. I love understanding how people think about that intersection point, and finding ways that we can work with technology to improve the world. To that end, my interests lie primarily in design and communication of technical products, as well as introductory computer science education. I’ve had technical engineering internships at Intel Corporation and Palantir Technologies, and I am an undergraduate teaching assistant for computer science classes at USC. I am a curious mind, software developer, graphic designer, wannabe teacher, oboe player, music composer, yoga enthusiast, water child, psychology addict, jewelry maker, slight foodie, loyal friend and daughter, and of course bridge lover.
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Citations All text and background information in this book made possible by the Wikimedia Foundation. Photos taken from various online sources. Thanks to the Guinness Book of World Records for data that assisted in choosing superlatives.
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Š 2014 Erika Johnson