An innovative road/rail bridge with a collaboration of cable-stayed and suspension and steel truss spans has opened to traffic.
The Tongling Chang Jiang Bridge in Anhui, eastern China, is 720m upstream of the cable-stayed Tongling Highway Bridge. The river crossing section is 1.5km long (link opens in new tab).
Sunrise over the Chang Jiang with the new Tongling dual-deck bridge. Credit: CRECG
The distinctive red steel truss, suspension and cable-stayed structure. Credit: CRECG
Its lower deck carries a four-track railway, and its upper deck bears a six-lane highway. The stacked design is intended to make efficient use of the river’s shoreline. According to China Railway Group, building a single dual-deck bridge has saved more than 20% of construction costs over building two separate structures.
The ‘collaborative’ design utilises the advantage of suspension bridges, which allow longer spans, and of cable-stayed structures, which have a high rigidity and greater load-bearing capacity.
