In China ready before the highest bridge in the world. A comparison? 625 meters against 541 of the One World Trade Center skyscraper in New York.
It will be called Huajiang Canyon Bridge and will be the highest bridge in the world. Not in terms of height of the pylons, nor even altitude on the sea level, but in relation to the vertical distance that the deck will fly over: Ben 625 metersthat is, those that will separate the road surface from the lowest point of the ground below, in this case the Beipan river. To make it anengineering excellenceIn other words, it is the void under the structure.
Like a skyscraper. The Chinese work (43 of the 50 more “higher” suspended bridges on the planet are found in China) will beat the current prison holder 60 metersthe Duge bridge (565 meters), built in 2016 about 200 km further north, always to cross the deep canyon in which the Beipan flows. The imposing structure required Only three years of workin the face of an expense of about 283 million dollarsAnd will be open to traffic by June 2025. The deck has been completed these days and will be paved, equipped and tested in the coming weeks.
To understand the dizzying height that is already covering, you can compare with some of the highest skyscrapers on the planet: The One World Trade Center in New York, for example, measures “just” 541 meters And, among all, only three have larger numbers (Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, 830 meters, Kuala Lumpur’s shit 118, 680 meters, and Shanghai Tower, 632).
Extreme engineering. Overall, the suspended bridge is 2,890 meters longwith one main span of 1,420 and two support towers 262 high. The cablesdesigned to resist very strong twenty, are hooked to an imposing steel beam consisting of 93 segments for a total weight of approx 22,000 tons. The equivalent, so to speak, of Two Eiffel towers. The choice of this structural solution made itself mandatory due to the impervious morphology of the canyon and the strong thermal excursions to that height, which generate frequent atmospheric turbulence e extreme weather conditions. The precision in the laying of the modular elements, often carried out with cable crane suspended in the void, has requested minimum margins of error, lower than the two centimeters, but despite the difficulties, the entire apparatus maintains a subtle and elegant profile, designed to minimize the visual impact and reduce the use of material while maintaining maximum structural efficiency.
Record times. Despite the logistical and environmental difficulties, The works ended in advance of the forecasts. This thanks to the controversial Chinese decision -making system, which allows Speed to the maximum authorizations and construction sites, reducing ecological controls and local oppositions.
Just think that similar projects, in the West, would take five to ten years to be completed.
A recent example is that of the Gordie Howe bridge, between Detroit and Windsor, which will be 220 meters high and which will also be inaugurated in the coming months, after over seven years of work. Beijing’s “top-down” approach, which combines massive public investments and centralized planninginstead allows you to start quickly Infrastructures also in remote areas. In addition, the workforce employed in construction sites like this can reach several thousand technicians and workers, with exhausting shifts, often in “extreme” working conditionsto respect the timing set by the development plans.
A strategic work. The goal of the Huajiang Canyon Bridge is connect faster The urban centers of Guiyang, Anshun and Qianxinanreducing travel times by land from over an hour to a handful of minutes. According to local authorities, the work will stimulate the economic integration of South-West China, also enhancing tourism in one of the most spectacular, but less accessible, regions of the country.
In addition to local traffic, the bridge falls within a wider one connection strategy between the hinterland and the large commercial routeslike the new internal logistics routes connected to the so -called “New Silk Road“((Belt and Road Initiative).
Finally, from the landscape point of view, the slender profile of the bridge was designed for adapt to the natural contextavoiding the installation of pylons in the river bed and trying to minimize the impact on canyon biodiversity. In this way, the work also aims to become a symbol of balance – at least apparent – between engineering progress and landscape protection.
