CNN.com – France opens tallest road bridge – Dec 14, 2004
From an Americans perspective few realize that the greatest civil engineers in the word are the French. They have huge sewers under Paris that have been there forever. The roads in France are like silk and with no potholes. They make fast trains and if you ask any American civil engineer, the French build bridges that are decades ahead of the rest of the world. It was the French engineers behind that 150 MPH Acela Amtrak train running between Boston and D.C. incidentally.
But it’s this bridge in Millau that gets me. Built in conjunction with British architect Norman Foster this bridge was designed and completed for less than 400 million Euros or about $600 million at today’s rate (it would have been $350 million before Bush got hold of the economy). But even at $600 million this is peanuts compared to what Californians are being charged for little more than a new onramp to replace the Oakland span of the SF Bay Bridge (to be renamed the Norton Bridge). This simple Oakland project (by comparison to the Millau) is bumping $2 billion and could go higher. Why don’t we bring in the French to do the bridge? Californians, as sharp as they all consider themselves, are exploited by the corruptions of the Democrat run government on a daily basis. This new French bridge makes a mockery out of the rip-off taking place in the SF Bay Area. Laughable.
MILLAU, France (AP) — Piercing the sky above the verdant hills of southern France, a stunningly modern roadway bridge hailed as the tallest in the world was officially inaugurated Tuesday.
Celebrated as a work of art and an object of French national pride, the Millau bridge will enable motorists to take a drive through the sky — 270 meters (891 feet) above the Tarn valley for a 2.5 kilometer (1.6 mile) stretch through France’s Massif Central mountains.
Designed by British architect Norman Foster, the steel-and-concrete bridge with its streamlined diagonal suspension cables rests on seven pillars — the tallest measuring 340 meters (1,122 feet), making it 16 meters (53 feet) taller than the Eiffel Tower.
slideshows of the bridge:
Check out the BBC slideshow here
Check out the Der Spiegal slide show here
He shoots, he scores!@!
The French didn’t have to build their bridge in the most dangerous earthquake zone in the world.
Also, the bridge is technically a viaduct, since it goes over land.
It’s a lot easier and cheaper to build on solid ground than over water.
The French are great at making decisions at the government level and ramming it down their citizens throats, unless it involves taking away their entitlements. That’s why they have such a great nuclear power plants. They settled on a safe, simple design, and built them by the dozen, appropriately ignoring all opposition from fear of the nuclear, radiation bogeyman. No local input, no endless environmental studies for each plant. The cost per Megawatt turned out to be quite reasonable, when you cut though all the bullshit.
But cutting through bullshit isn’t America’s strong suit, so the reason our bridges are expensive are:
1) The engineering requirements of the location and geography have a lot to do with cost. Floating everything on barges, blasting underwater, shoring up or drilling down through unstable soils, making everything earthquake proof. That’s expensive.
2) Endless consultation with localities, government, business, citizens groups, etc, etc, etc. That way no one can say “they didn’t even talk to us”, when it turns out to be ugly AND expensive.
I have an engineer friend working on construction of the Benecia bridge (up the Sacramento River in the north of the SF Bay Area). They had to stop construction for at least 1 month because their underwater blasting was killing too many fish, which may or may not have been endangered. Next we’ll be protecting the bacteria in the mud from “adverse audio events”.
I’m glad to see all that experience building the Maginot line wasn’t wasted.
I’m very curious to know about the “normal” air currents around the bridge deck and what they might do to a high-profile vehicle crossing that beautiful piece of engineering. More than one such vehicle has been tossed around by wind and since the bridge spans a valley which theoretically forms a perfect channel for wind to do its best on that high-profile vehicle, it might be very interesting to watch what happens.
Paris airport roof collapse kills five…
The terminal is used by Air France among others
At least five people have been killed and three hurt after a roof collapsed at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3739715.stm
The answers to questions above — at least those grounded in engineering rather than American egos — are pretty thoroughly covered in a superb HD documentary which shows up, periodically, on Discovery HD’s “Extreme Engineering”. The system they used to build each section and, then, slide the continually growing assembly out from each end until they joined in the middle — was absolutely a triumph of design simple enough to satisfy Archimedes.
In fact, it WAS his design.
By the way, the roof collapse in Paris was on a project under construction. It had more to do with subcontractors not living up to standards required by the overall conttractor and designer. It had absolutely nothing to do with the design
Not so rare in any nation, sadly.
Nationalism is irritating. It’s a beautiful bridge. I’m sure it’s easier to build over land than water. It’s still beautiful. The Maginot line was funny and not near as useful or attractive. The bridge still looks cool. I mean viaduct. I’m glad it’s not in an earthquake zone. That’s sad that the airport roof collapsed. I hope it wasn’t the same people who made the bridge. I hope no cars get blown off the bridge. I’m not sure how interesting that would be.
Jeff – I guess I’m old enough to remember more than one vehicle being blown off the old Tampa Bay Skyway bridge right into the water. In one particular instance, the Coast Guard rescued the occupants from a floating VW beetle, thru the sunroof, as I remember.
That’s what I mean by “interesting.” It was meant from an engineering standpoint, nothing more.
Further, if you had ever traveled across the bridge near the Soo locks back in the ’60s, you would have seen screens preventing visual sightings of the missile bases deployed there.
Such screens, modified to allow full panoramic vision but prevent high-profile vehicle vehicles from exiting the bridge over the side due to high winds surely would have been contemplated . . . wouldn’t they?
Jeff, coming from the world of building trades [well, at least the last eight years], I see the difference between General Contractors and subcontractors, easily and often. Some folks might not.
In truth, the GC on the Paris airport job is the same as the bridge. It’s also the same company that built the Eiffel Tower. Yes, they have been around for a while. What I read in the trades is that the airport collapse resulted from shoddy procedures utillized by a critical sub — who didn’t get caught violating the GC’s standards and methods.
If you ever get a chance to see the video on construction of the viaduct [Discovery HD], you’ll see how complex it all can get. That job had a basic division, not only between trades and management and architects; essentially, all business was conducted in both French and Spanish.
i love bridges and horses i think you should build a horse bridge for horses or the like. it should be at least a thousand feet long with no straight lines and many curvy bits like a horse. high security should be enabled as the horses using it will be high profile racer like spoon flier and corpse spit, these will require the best horse guards and they will live forever because of their grateful duty
i hate horses and think they should all die because ponies are the best! the should be no horse bridge or at least no horse-type architecture they are foul-mouthed scum who are overrated and definitly should be assualted if the horse guards ar not up to scratch which they probably wont be as they will be wearing blinkers.
Major Civil Engineering projects are invariably feats of tremendous international co-operation and I was somewhat annoyed that the Discovery Channel documentary on this bridge made no mention I can recall of the fact that the bridge was by a British designer. British civil engineers are at least the equal of the French and I’m sure that the American experts in the field are in the same World Class . Let’s not mix expertise with politics and don’t raise too many flags on account of one French project which was completed on time and on budget as every nation has it’s embarassing overspends and design lemons which you won’t see on Discovery.
I think all of this is very interesting either way. But why can’t the ego’s be thrown out the window and let both sides enjoy and appreciate the hard work and dedication gone into the projects. I love watching how these large and amazing structures are designed and built.
Please leave the GC’s alone!
DS
Sorry ,guys!
You Yanks,are good,no ifs of buts about it,but the frogs are a bloody touch up,are they not?? Twas and tis a beaut of a thing,hey?? Lets just enjoy it ,like DS just said.