I wandered through a series of photos of “scariest bridges in the world.” Just had to share this one, of the Eshima Ohashi Bridge, Matsue, Japan.
It’s more like an artificial hill than a bridge; and not a rolling, gentle hill, either.
As a flatlander, I’m glad I don’t have anything like that in my morning commute. :eek:
It certainly looks scary from that angle, but it’s mostly due to perspective. From the side, it doesn’t look any worse than lots of other minor slopes.
I don’t recommend driving in San Francisco if this bothers you :).
Argh, another redundant translation. (Ohashi = “great bridge”, so Ohashi Bridge is redundant.)
Here’s a video of somebody driving over the bridge. It doesn’t seem that extreme from this close-up perspective.
I am a flatlander. I did not find that video re-assuring.
Yeah San Fran was something else! I grew up in Michigan and now live in NY and have never experienced driving on hills that felt pretty much vertical. I mean, if it snowed there, I don’t think you could handle it. At least you would be entertained by the spectacle of cars merrily sliding down the street right into the harbor!
But since you don’t get snow, it was perfectly lovely, and quite enjoyable.
To me, I’m less intimidated by the height or slope than I am by that weird sideways jog in the middle of the approach span. WTF? Did they somehow miss their aim building from abutment to first tower somehow? “Oh, crap, we’re going to miss the main deck by about a 1/2 meter. Hey, Lefty, can you shift the foundation over about 15 degrees? Thanks.”
There’s certainly an element of forced perspective (“Northern Piper revealed to be world’s tallest man!”), but that approach does still look like a rather steep grade. Comparing it to San Francisco only emphasizes that.
TheJamestown Verrazano Bridgein Rhode Island has a similar appearance. The predecessor Jamestown Bridge (closed in 1992 when the new one opened) had an identical height, but was much, much steeper. And only one narrow lane in each direction. With a grated deck. That was a scary bridge.
I think that is a step up, not a shunt to the side.
Amen to that. This photoprovides some sense of what that bridge was like… the photo shows the infamous grated deck in the foreground (which invariably caused one’s car to veer back and forth slightly from left to right), but without the solid lines of traffic moving at around 40 mph. (At least that big cable-looking thing in the right hand lane was not there when the bridge was open. This picture comes from when the new bridge, one terminus of which can be seen at the right, was already completed.)
I think I would not like to go over any of those bridges. I live near this one and it wasn’t until I drove over it that I suddenly developed a skeevy feeling about bridges. At first it was just *that *one and I thought it was because the remains of a prior bridge that got hit by a freighter were still in the water and it was rather creepy. But no, I must say all bridges are starting to freak me out. I’m not afraid of heights, I love roller coasters, etc. so no idea why. Weird.
It’s pretty close to 60 F all year round. Snow would be… exciting.
The actual steepness of the hills no longer bothers me. But I still get a little tingle every time I crest a hill and the closest thing you can see past your car’s nose is the ocean.
Northern Piper and other flatlanders; I’m told there’s a troupe of people you can hire to drive your car over Florida’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge (which is probably the one in WOOKINPANUB’s link,) while you hold your hands over your eyes. You stop to hire the driver on one side of the bridge, he gets in the driver’s seat to drive over the bridge, and you stop to let him off on the other side. Then he’ll cross the road and drive somebody else back. At the end of a shift, he’ll get into his own car to go home. There are big pull-off areas at both ends of the bridge.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland offers that service as well.
Houston is nice and flat. But highway builders make up for that by stacking roads on top of each other. It can be disconcerting to be driving along an expressway and realize you’re two hundred feet off the ground.
That is exactly the bridge I thought about as well when I saw the Japanese photo. It is an impressive bridge and I have driven across it many times. I really wish I had a video of the time I drove up it and the top of the hump was nothing but thick fog that completely obscured it. Visibility was great at the bottom but not the top so it just looked like you were taking a drive of faith that the bridge didn’t just end suddenly over the water.
They love to pull that trick in Dallas as well. I don’t mind the roads themselves that much but I don’t like the fact that they screw up common GPS navigation devices because most of them aren’t programmed to know which layer of the wedding cake highway design you are really on.
pfft. Amateurs. We keep a whole 'nother city under our city. And the main roads that run, vertically parallel, through both, have the same name. Just to keep you and your gps insane. Wacker Drive - Wikipedia
The Astoria-Megler bridge at the mouth of the Columbia is another that looks okay to scary depending on the angle of the shot.
The part that seems scariest (at least to MrsFtG, not me) is the rising curved ramp on the Astoria end.
Good thing it never gets windy there.
