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Highest Bridge in the World Nearing Completion
An anonymous reader writes "A weekend cookie for all engineering geeks out here. The central span of the Millau bridge (270 meters or 886 ft) has been completed!" The photo is awesome.
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That sure is some bridge, but must be a real eyesore to those who have to live near it.
Well, in fact, they are the same folks... 2E airport terminal was built by Vinci and Eiffage. Millau viaduc is built by Eiffage alone.
two friends of mine did it last week-end, 6 am.
Awesome jump. They loved it.
this bridge is gonna see a lot of base jumpers....
no, but the architect is Sir Norman Foster of Foster and Partners, responsible for the Millenium Footbridge in London that had to be closed after it was found to be dangerous... ...I'll follow you over...
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
They built it because every summer thousands of cars get stuck in Millau while traveling from north to south.
Maybe it's a suspension vs. non-suspension thing.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
There are also seven temporary pillars, soon to be removed. The central core, north, is 717m, and wings are about 670m. At south, the central core is 1744m, with wings 1573m.
The motorway is two lanes wide in each direction with a three-metre wide hard shoulder on each side and a one-metre wide bande dérasée next to the central crash barrier.
And for all you Americans joking about the terminal collapse, consider that in France, bridges are built. In America, bridges are burned--figuratively, of course, since the terrorists have not (yet) taken down your tallest bridges. Give them time, or peace be with you.
Mod parent up!
From the site:
"Eiffage was selected to carry out this project combining the techniques of concrete with those of steel.
Constituting the last stretch of the A75 motorway, once opened it will enable Clermont-Ferrand to be reached directly from Béziers, so getting rid of the infamous Millau traffic bottleneck."
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Sorry but last I checked the Royal Gorge Bridge (in Colorado, USA) is still higher. Built in 1929 too.
1053 feet. Roughly 320.95 meters. Or 50 meters higher.
info here
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
Major writeup of the project:
http://www.a75.com/viaducengl.html
Back in my more fearless days I went camping in West Virginia (behind the Red Dog Saloon, near Fayetteville) for a week and some rafting on the New River. Life behind a bar seemed to begin and end days with a beer in hand and fuzzy sense of things. The sleep deprivation, brought on by thundering (and I really do mean thundering, like 150db or louder) coal trucks dashing down into the gorge every night, didn't help matters much. Eventually my bud Roger suggests we do bridge laps, in reference to the New River Gorge bridge. So what are those? Oh, we'll see. It invovled drinking about six beers then walking along an I beam for about 20 feet then skulking along the cat walk to about halfway out into the gorge where a little access ladder on either side of the bridge allows on to climb up, scramble across and down the other side. Certainly it's one of the highest bridges I've ever been on, or under. A set of train track deep in the gorge, with a tiny spotlight shining on it from near a service shed, looked like N-guage. It was slightly comforting to note that aside from seeing the light on the track there was little other indication of how far below the bottom of the gorge was.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's called grandeur and it's the psychological hideout where the French still pretend they're a nation that makes the its enemies tremble in a world where French is the world language. As a (former) neighbour of France, I can say this is the attitude that generally mostly pisses off the rest of Europe. Luckily most Frenchmen are alright persons, but the fact that chauvinism* comes from a certain Chauvin should indicate that the French culture has a long line of nutty patriotic crap to digest.
Hardly... this bridge is among the ugliest I've ever seen, I think it's enough to trigger a heart attack in any environmentalist's chest. It reminds me of a bridge I had seen in Abruzzo, Italy, in a very similar situation; not as high I guess, but definitely equally ugly. In that case, the most likely reason was to start an expensive series of public works, so that a lot of money would have been sent from Rome, so that politicians could "shave off" their fat share. Wonder what was the drive in France.
* Chauvinism is the exhaltation of the Motherland beyond any reason. The project for a new American century is, for example, chauvinistic. It has nothing to do with discrimination of women, even though some hundred millions English speakers got it totally wrong.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
The pictures may be misleading, but there aren't exactly offramps into the town. So:
1.) There is less traffic going through the town, less of a need to stop in the town, and it is harder to stop in town.
2.) It has never been about tourism for Millau. the town is in the way, and the bridge serves to get people from one big city to the coast, circumventing Millau.
In a nutshell "We're Millau. We built a huge freaking bridge that goes around our city so people don't have to drive through here any more. Come visit us!"
I have jumped the New River Bridge numerous times. Back when I was BASE jumping, BASE is an acronym, more heavily than now I'm sure I'd try to check this place out.
For info check out http://www.blincmagazine.com
Building Antenna Span Earth.
You can see some more pictures of this project, along with some of the artist renderings of what the thing will look like when done, here.
Double inaccuracy... first of all, the millenium bridge was by Lord Foster, not Sir Foster (if you think such details are irrelevant, try talking about Congressman Kerry and Prime Minister Bush). And secondly, it was never found to be dangerous. It was closed temporarily when it was found to sway several feet from side to side under heavy foot traffic due to an unforeseen resonance at around the frequency of human walking. (Frankly, this was the falt of the engineers more than the architect.) This was fixed by adding a few dampers and now it's perfectly steady.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
I thought this meritted a search on Ixquick Metasearch http://www.ixquick.com
Here are my choice results on the Millau Viaduct or Bridge depending on what report you read.
http://www.bridgepros.com/projects/Millau_Viadu
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3237329
http://www.viaducdemillaueiffage.com/
N.B. This site is in heavy demand so by all means make a note of the URL to try another time / at a later date.
http://www.construction.com/NewsCenter/Headline
http://www.enerpac.com/html/press_releases/Beri
Interesting to note that Sir Norman Foster was involved in this. For more info on his work try: http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Norman_F
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
The length of this bridge is quite impressive. The longest suspension bridge on record is the Dames Point (Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge)in Jacksonville Florida that is about 2 miles long. It's span consisting of cables is only about 1/3 of the overall length (not sure how the whole bridge is considered suspension). This one apeears to be roughly 60% of the length of the Dames Point but is suspended cables the whole length. Seeing the Dames Point on a quite regular basis, I must say that one is very impressive.
Just for height comparisons, the Dames Point is about 425 feet (130m) high with the highest point over water being 175 feet (about 54m). Quite an accomplishment considering what it took to build this little thing.
The road will have two lanes (3.50m each) on each side and will run at about 270m above the river Tarn. The Millau Viaduct will not be straight. A straight road could induce a sensation of floating for drivers. A slight curve will remedy that. The curve will be of 20km in range. Moreover, the road will have a light hill of 3% to improve the visibility and reassure the driver. A 3m wide emergency lane will bring increased security. It will, in particular, prevent drivers from seeing the valley from the viaduct. As the bridge will be exposed to winds of up to 151km/h, side screens will reduce the effects of the wind by 50%. The speed of the wind at the level of the road will therefore reflect to speed of the wind found at ground level around Larzac and Sauveterre.
l lau_viaduct/
From http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/projects/mi
People walk slightly in step, and on the millenium bridge this caused a minor sway, and then everybody walked in step with the sway - which made it sway even more.
The "fault" was that the engineers didnt expect this human behaviour, and the extent of the sway made people uncomfortable. I beleive they fixed the sway by adding fairly simple dampers to it, not beacause there was any danger but because people found it uncomfortable (and probably more to the point, news coverage was embarrasing for the engineering firm).
Google came up with this FMI.
From here:
The bridge has the optimum span between cable-stayed columns. It is delicate, transparent, and uses the minimum material, which makes it less costly to construct.
Why does this talk of "delicate" bridges not have me rushing to cross it? I realise there's more than one definition of the word delicate, but still.
IIRC, a LOT of trucks take that road every year, so building a road around Millau still solves just part of the problem: it will be a lot easier and faster for everyone to just take a straight line rather than going down in the valley, through the valley, and up again. IIRC, they claim the trips will be 1 to 2 hours shorter thanks to the bridge -that's less time on the road, therefore safer overall, less pollution etc...
This is an entirely private project, the french govt didn't want to pay for it. That's bad for the drivers though, who will have to pay a lot of money to cross the bridge.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Bush was never a Prime Minister, AFAK...
But if he were it would be improper to call him President Bush in anything other than the past tense.
Jimmy Carter is "President" Carter only when refering to a time when he was the actual sitting President, and contemporaneously he may be properly refered to as "Former President" Carter or addressed as "Mr." Carter.
Nevermind the fact that "President" and "Prime Misister" are actually the names of the offices, not a title, and the forms are different. To take something of an extreme example it would be improper to address Wendy Carlos as "Mr.".
If one did address Ms. Carlos as Mr. or "The former Mr. Carlos" it would likely be taken as a delibate slight at his current status.
So too, for addressing Lord Norman Foster as the "Former Sir." Without contextual qualifications it implies an impuning of his right to be a Lord.
misterpies made a double error of his own, however. There is not, and never was either a Sir or Lord Foster. The title attaches to the name of the recipient, not the recipient's father.
Thus it is Sir/Lord Norman, or Sir/Lord Norman Foster, but never Sir/Lord Foster (Just as Churchill was Lord Randolph).
KFG
The Fremont bridge in Portland is not a suspension bridge, but rather "the longest tied-arch bridge in the world"
It may be a flat valley, but the drop-offs into the valley are quite steep.
Thanks to another poster above, check out this page, particularly the photo right at the bottom. You can see how difficult it would be to get an expressway down into the valley and then back up. The page also shows the various options considered, as well as the reasons for accepting the tall viaduct.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
According to the English articles due to the steep sides of the valley cause massive traffic bottlenecks. Though if I'd owned a convenience store or gas station that was profiting from the bottlenecks I'd be irked ^_^
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003