World's Highest Road Bridge

[Nickodell]

Stay off Rt. A75 if you get queasy from heights!

The Millau Viaduct is a large cable-stayed road bridge that spans the valley of the River Tarn near Millau in southern France, and is the tallest vehicular bridge in the world, with one mast's summit at 1,125 ft. — slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower and only 125 ft. shorter than the Empire State Building. The viaduct is part of the A75-A71 autoroute from Paris to Béziers. It was opened to traffic on December 16 2004.

The bridge’s construction broke three world records:

· The highest pylons in the world: pylons P2 and P3, 803 ft 8 in and 725 ft 3 in in height respectively, broke the world record previously held by the Kochertal Viaduct (Germany), which is 590 ft at its highest;

· The highest mast in the world: the mast atop pylon P2 peaks at 1,130 ft.

· The highest road bridge deck in the world, 890 ft. at its highest point. It is nearly twice as tall as the previous tallest vehicular bridge in Europe, the Europabrücke in Austria. It is slightly higher than the New River Gorge Bridge in W. Virginia, which is 880 ft. above the New River.

The record for highest bridge deck in the world is likely to be taken by the Chenab Bridge in the Reasi District of Jammu and Kashmir, India, scheduled for completion in December 2009, which will be 1,180 ft high.

 

[skywords]

Nick I have seen other pictures of that bridge and marveled at it's beauty but never seen it in it's entirety. It makes one wonder why it was even necessary? Looks to me that the road could have just gone down thru the valley? Almost Hoover Damn like in it's magnitude. Good for the French!

 

[alpine_64]

Rick,

Its actually by a british architect Sir norman Foster.. also the bit that gets me is the amount the bridge rises and falls with wind/temps.

 

[Nickodell]

Nick I have seen other pictures of that bridge and marveled at it's beauty but never seen it in it's entirety. It makes one wonder why it was even necessary? Looks to me that the road could have just gone down thru the valley? Almost Hoover Damn like in it's magnitude. Good for the French!

The original route can be seen snaking into the valley floor from the right, crossing a little bridge in the middle distance, and then snaking up the hill on the other side.

From Wikepedia: Before the bridge, a crossing of the River Tarn was provided by a bridge situated in the valley bottom, in the town of Millau. Millau was then known and dreaded as a ‘great black spot’ of motoring. Kilometres of congestion and hours of waiting to transit the town recurred each year with the great surge in traffic in summer months. These slowdowns meant that the advantages of the A75 were lost. The A75 was meant to be a positive example of spatial planning, a modern, direct highway entirely free along its 340 km (210 mi) length. As it was, the traffic from the autoroute brought pollution and danger to the town of Millau.

Design and construction of the bridge took a long time. In this region, climatic conditions are tough, with violent winds. Geological characteristics of the high plateaus of Larzac are peculiar, and, because the Tarn Valley is so deep, crossing is difficult. Different approaches were investigated, and all of them were found to be very technically demanding. Ten years of research and four years of implementation were required for completion of the Millau Viaduct.

 

[Nickodell]

Rick: Here's another view, not distorted by a fisheye lens this time:

 

[RootesRacer]

Check this out...

1053 feet off the river below.
The tramway is 1175 feet above the river.

http://www.royalgorgebridge.com/FactSheet.aspx

 

[howard]

My wife sang with a choir on the Royal Gorge Bridge back in the late 70's. She speaks (no pun intended here-) highly of it.