OPEN LETTER/ Come to the dialogue and listen to me speak, otherwise I will cut off your scholarships, you will rot in prison. Please!

 Kliko këtu për të tjera
Voxpress:

How did the highest bridge in the world change the map of Europe? (PHOTO)

2024-08-21 21:01:22Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
How did the highest bridge in the world change the map of Europe? (PHOTO)
Millau Viaduct

Lying in a fabulous landscape, it is without a doubt one of the most beautiful bridges in the world. Often shrouded in mist, so much so that it looks like it's passing through the clouds, it's so famous that it has its own visitor center, and people plan sightseeing trips just to pass over it. The bridge can even be easily seen from space, writes CNN.

It is about the "Millau Viaduct", the perfect example of the union of engineering and art. Towering over the Tarn Gorge in southern France, the 2,460-meter-long Millau Viaduct is the world's tallest bridge, a whopping 336.4 meters.

But these numbers are not enough to sum up its greatness.

Unlike other famous bridges, which usually connect two points of the same height, the Millau Viaduct swings through the valley as the ground beneath its feet takes on different shapes.

Its seven piers have different heights, ranging from 78 to 245 meters high, each calculated with millimetric precision to level the bridge to perfection. They are reinforced by seven steel pillars, each 87 meters high, supported by 11 cables on each side. All this keeps the road – 4.2 meters thick and weighing 36,000 tons – completely stable.

But besides being a work of high precision, the bridge is also beautiful. Although it is erected in a protected area, the bridge only amplifies its beauty.

According to David Knight, director of design and engineering at Cacke Industries, the bridge is "one of the wonders of the modern world" and "an engineering marvel".

Those who live in the valley below it look up in adoration, those who pass by it on one of the main highways connecting the south with the north of France. But how did it happen that this wonder of the modern world was built in the middle of France. Why did it take two decades to plan before it opened for traffic in December 2004? And how did this bridge change the map of Europe?

Construction challenges

The answer to these questions is geography. The Massif Central is a large mountainous area separated by steep valleys and gorges, occupying approximately 15% of the total area of ​​France. Bordered by the Alps to the east, it is one of the most difficult areas to travel to for anyone looking to cross France from north to south, or for anyone wanting to travel from northern Europe to Spain.

So important is this passage, but also so difficult, that it took two decades to plan and get it up and running, at least according to Michel Virlogeux, the engineer who led the works since they began in 1987. “The first problem it was not that the bridge should be built, but where it would cross," he tells CNN.

At that time, the Central Massif was a remote area, despite being located in the center of the country. There was a single railway running through it and the other roads were in poor condition. "The whole central part of France could not be developed because of the lack of road infrastructure," says Virlogeux.

So in the 1980s, the French government decided to modernize the road network, to avoid the heavy traffic that was created there by the narrow roads and the kilometer-long queues of cars trying to descend into the valley. "It was like a black spot for tourists," says Emmanuelle Gazel, the current mayor of the town of Millau. "There were traffic jams, for kilometers. A very ugly image for our area. Even the locals could barely move."

Virlogeux says the decision to build a bridge there was made in September 1986, but there was a problem, the geography of the area left no path for an easy solution. "It took us 3 years to find a solution," he says.

The experts were put to work. Geologists, geotechnologists, road engineers and Virlogeux, who by then had on his CV the footbridge of Normandy, crossing the river Seine in the province of the same name.

But even as the technical details were worked out, the French government wanted the design to be first rate as well. A competition was opened for this and in 1996 it was won by the group led by Virlogeux and the British architect Lord Norman Foster.

The most difficult task was to convince the local residents that the bridge would not destroy their protected area, but would even beautify it even more. After this problem was solved, work on the construction of the bridge started in October 2001. The project cost 400 million euros and 290 thousand tons of steel and concrete were used, while 600 workers worked.

The bridge that connected France and the continent

When the idea for the project was born, local residents did not agree, but their attitude changed after they saw what the new bridge would look like. "People thought that the creation of this bypass would cause tourists to avoid the city," says Gazel. "Others said it would spoil the view, but in fact it made it even more attractive." And the visitors did not avoid it, they even increased. In the first year alone, 10,000 cars would stop every weekend in the area to see what had been built.

All of a sudden, traveling from the north to the south of France and from the north of Europe to Spain (or vice versa) was an easy thing to do.

"Today, tourists come for the bridge, but they also discover other wonderful things that we have here in Millau", says the mayor. "We are no longer a black dot on the map. We are a tourist destination that people choose to visit. So the town was not emptied, on the contrary".

Galeria fotografike (
)


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

Video

SHIKO KANALIN NE YOUTUBE
×