For all you highway/bridge enthusiasts out there, maybe you missed the news of the recent opening of the longest bridge in the world, across the Dardanelles Strait in Turkey, like I did. Google Street view covered its approaches in February. Here’s the Wikipedia report:
The 1915 Çanakkale Bridge (Turkish: 1915 Çanakkale Köprüsü ), also known as the Dardanelles Bridge ( Çanakkale Boğaz Köprüsü ), is a road suspension bridge in the province of Çanakkale in northwestern Turkey. Situated just south of the coastal towns of Lapseki and Gelibolu, the bridge spans the Dardanelles strait, about 10 km (6.2 mi) south of the Sea of Marmara.[2] The bridge was officially opened by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 18 March 2022 after roughly five years of construction.[4] The year “1915” in the official Turkish name honours an important Ottoman naval victory against the British and the French during World War I.
The bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the world—with a main span of 2,023 m (6,637 ft), the bridge surpasses the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge (1998) in Japan by 32 m (105 ft). It is the centrepiece of the planned 321-kilometre long (199 mi) US$2.8 billion Kınalı-Balıkesir Motorway, which will connect the O-3 and O-7 motorways in East Thrace to the O-5 motorway in Anatolia. [5]
The bridge is the first fixed crossing over the Dardanelles[6] and the sixth one across the Turkish Straits, after three bridges over the Bosphorus and two tunnels under it.[7]