 AP Photo by Ding Xiaochun |
The Suzhou-Nantong Yangtze Road Bridge, the world’s largest cable-stayed bridge, has formally opened in east China’s Jiangsu Province after five years of construction.
The bridge, linking the two prosperous cities of Nantong and Suzhou, runs 32.4 kilometers, with 8,146 meters spanning the Yangtze, China’s longest waterway. It has three lanes each way…
It has the world’s longest span of 1,088 meters, usurping the previous record holder, the Tatara Bridge in Japan, which has a main span of 890 meters…
Its steel and concrete towers, the tallest bridge towers in the world, stand at 300.4 meters.
How soon will it be before we learn the name of the first numbnut to commit suicide by jumping?
That is some big bridge !!!
Nice bridge. The money spent on the war in Iraq could have for hundreds of similar bridges (~522 if the costs were the same) in the US. Not that it would be necessary to build that many bridges, but just as a comparison.
3 Lanes… how long till it becomes congested?
I’d be more inpressed if it was double the capacity.
Would double the capacity cost twice as much?
3 lanes each way #3. Well, how many years was the GW bridge around before it had to be expanded? And what was the growth in vehicle numbers per mile?
This ain’t downtown Shanghai – or downtown LA, for that matter.
Traffic seemed rather light in the photo.
#2 – Myself … “could have for” = “could have paid for” … erased a little bit too much. 🙂
It’s China. No one in the worker’s paradise of China commits “suicide”. They just have “fatal self inflicted accidents”.
Nice bridge. But man, you hear about the ‘class’ issues here, or the gab between rich and poor…but China has a REAL problem coming. Sure they have 300 million rich or middle class living in this nice modern cities, but they still have a billion poor people. So you part of the population in these ‘free trade’ zones being total western capitalists, drinking Starbucks, driving BMWs, good internet access, etc. Then you have poor folks living on state land still doing near communal farming in the rural part of the country still at least trying to pretend to be communists. This split is going to cause more and more stress since it’s far large and more exaggerated than the ‘class’ differences in our country.
#8 – Nothing To See
Have you ever been to China? If not, I urge you to pay a visit. The real poverty exists mainly in the countryside, but when you come to the bigger cities, you’ll be surprised at the rate of modernization. You’ll find modern buildings popping up like mushrooms and you can find your beloved Starbucks (there used to be one inside the Forbidden City!), McDonalds, Pizza Hut, etc. (if that’s a measure of progress) and BMWs in every major city (and they’re not free trade zones) In order to turn around a 1.3B country, you’ll have to start somewhere… the countryside will be taken care of sooner or later.
[Fixed. – ed.]
I’ve been to China, in Shanghai they’ve built a mag-lev train which will take you from the airport to the center of the city. Very few use it because it’s too expensive.
To open the bridge, they should have a marathon run, starting 10km from the bridge, with the finish line at the other side.
The people in the countryside are much poorer than the city-dwellers. On the other hand, it’s actually possible to get by on $50/month (average) in the countryside. In the city, that coffee in Starbucks costs the same as it does in New York. And, ironically, the Starbucks coffee mugs, which are made in China, cost more.
Only 5 years?
Has anyone been watching the progress on the new Oakland Bay Bridge? I’m guessing 50 years before it is done. Every time I’m in SF I except to see progress… ain’t happening. Ants could build it faster.
Hell, the Golden Gate Bridge only took a little over 4 years from start of construction.
Any remember that last segment of the 105 (The Century Fwy) in Los Angeles… the freeway that connects LAX to the 110? Jeeze. It seemed like they were building the 405/105 intersection for 40 years.
So how’s that I-35 bridge in Minneapolis repair coming along? It has been almost a year now, and it was supposed to be finished in December of this year. The MN DOT web site claims it will be open before Xmas. Can any Twin City residents verify this seems to be on track?
#11 – chuck – …in Shanghai they’ve built a mag-lev train which will take you from the airport to the center of the city.
Which was partly paid for by the German government in order to get this German hi-tech train showcased in China.
China will be interesting to watch. Once our plane was delayed so the tour bus took us outside the airport for a spin around the neighborhood. We came to a “dirt poor” village of about 100 people. They seemed to be living on goats, pigs, and chickens that ate the weeds that grew from a drainage ditch that funneled the airport’s runway water off the property. Homes were hand made dirt clods of some kind–adobe brick not known to them I assume.
The kids came out to look at us and were very friendly. I handed out pencils and notebooks instead of candy. One kiddie took me home. Dirt floor, fire in the corner of a single room with all the walls scorthed black from soot with an exit punched thru the roof. About as poor as one can get?
Same one room whole family dirt floor dwelling had a solar panel connected to a tv and computer.
Change is coming to China–but isn’t change coming everywhere?
i wonder how well it is constructed….lets hope the same companies that did their schools didnt build this bridge… (remember the schools that collapsed in big quake in china??)
also what kind of weather is in this part of china??? i hope it isnt in a winter zone… the cables have a tendency to collect ice that gets flung off onto the road…..