Worlds most interesting bridges

source taken from eamazing.com

Gateshead Millennium Bridge - England

Designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects and engineered by Gifford, the bridge takes its place at the end of a line of distinguished bridges across the River Tyne, including the Tyne Bridge and Robert Stephenson's High Level Bridge.Linking Gateshead with Newcastle via Gateshead Quays (described as one of the best places in Europe by Tony Blair) and Newcastleâ?™s Quayside, the bridge not only serves a functional purpose as the River Tyneâ?™s only foot and cycle bridge, but its grace and engineering attract people from all over the world.

In 1996 Gateshead Council launched a competition to find a bridge that would link developments on both sides of the River Tyne and also complement the existing six bridges crossing the river.There were over 150 entries. Gateshead residents voted for their favourite design from a shortlist of leading architectural companies.
The brief was to create a bridge for pedestrians and cyclists that:-Allowed ships to pass underneath;-Did not overshadow the world famous view of the existing bridges;-Didnâ?™t obstruct the Quayside.

Hangzhou Bay Bridge - China

Hangzhou Bay Bridge , is a cable-stayed bridge across Hangzhou Bay off the eastern coast of China. It was linked up on June 14, 2007, and connects the municipalities of Shanghai and Ningbo in Zhejiang province. The bridge is the longest trans-oceanic bridge in the world, although it does not have the longest cable-stayed main span.

Construction of this bridge started on June 8, 2003. The bridge itself is 36 km long with six expressway lanes in two directions, making it the second-longest bridge in the world after the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana, USA. The bridge has two main spans, with a 448 metre northern span, and a 318 metre southern span. The designated speed is 100 kilometers per hour, and the designed longevity is more than 100 years.

Oresund Bridge

The Oresund Bridge (Danish Øresundsbroen, Swedish Öresundsbron, joint hybrid name Øresundsbron) is a combined two-track rail and four-lane road bridge across the Oresund strait. The bridge-tunnel is the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe and connects the two metropolitan areas of the Oresund Region: the Danish capital of Copenhagen and the Swedish city of Malmö. The international European route E20 runs across the bridge, as does the Oresund Railway Line.

The bridge has one of the longest cable-stayed main spans in the world at 490 metres (1,608 ft). The height of the highest pillar is 204 metres (669 ft). The total length of the bridge is 7,845 metres (25,738 ft), which is approximately half the distance between the Swedish and Danish landmasses, and its weight is 82,000 metric tons. The rest of the distance is spanned by the artificial island Peberholm (Pepper islet) (4,055 m), named as a counterpart to the already existing Saltholm islet, followed by a tunnel on the Danish side. The tunnel is 4,050 metres (13,287 ft) long, a 3,510 metre long buried undersea tunnel plus two 270-metre gate-tunnels. On the bridge, the two rail-tracks are beneath the four road lanes. The bridge has a vertical clearance of 57 metres (187 ft), although most boat traffic across Oresund still passes over the Drogden strait (where the tunnel lies). The bridge was designed by Arup.