After watching a movie set in Chicago and noticing all the bridges, it occured to me to wonder what river has the most bridges? I’m guessing it is a river that goes through a lot of cities like the Danube.
I’m not sure to count foot / bicycle bridges, or just bridges designed for automobiles or trains. Whatever is easier to find.
Brian
Interesting question…IDK the answer, but in the US I’d guess since the Mississippi more or less divides the country in two, with a large number of towns/cities built along it, there must be quite a few roads (bridges) crossing it.
And it also depends on the size of the river, and what you consider a ‘bridge’. Do culverts count? There are roads that follow creeks, and every driveway on one side must cross the creek. Then there are creeks that go through urban areas, and are channelized and enter pipes.
I like the question and have no idea what the right answer is. The problem with the Mississippi is that it gets quite wide so for most of its length the bridges are pretty far apart.
From the Wikipedia articles on a “List of crossings of the Upper Mississippi” and its companion, it looks like there are about 200 bridges, the majority of which are in Minnesota. I counted something like 120 that have at least one end in Minnesota. The articles do not claim to be comprehensive.
North of St. Louis, it’s not really all that wide. IDK how bridge distribution is actually affected.
Likely contenders would include, I imagine, the Danube, the Nile, Ole Miss, maybe the Ganges and the Yangtze?
I’d also include the Rhine, simply because it passes through such a prosperous, heavily-populated area.
All right! Let’s count. Not really but this prompted me to be looking at the Mississippi River in Google Maps just scrolling up the river poking at landmarks that looked interesting. Heading up from the south it looks like it takes 51 crossing (not counting dams) to get from New Orleans to Davenport, IA).
Within Louisiana
Connecting Louisiana and Mississippi
9. Natchez-Vidalia Bridge (US 84, Vidalia, LA)
10. Vicksburg Bridge (I-20, Vicksburge, MS)
Connecting Arkansas and Mississippi
11. Greenville Bridge (US 82, Greenville, MS)
12. Benjamin G. Humphreys Bridge (US 82, Greenville, MS - recently replaced by #11)
13. Helena Bridge (US 49, Helena, AR)
Connecting Arkansas and Tennessee
14. Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (US 64, Memphis, TN)
15. Harahan Bridge (rail, Memphis, TN)
16. Hernando de Soto Bridge (I-40, Memphis, TN)
Connecting Missouri and Tennessee
17. Caruthersville Bridge (I-155, Caruthersville, MO)
Connecting Missouri and Kentucky
Connecting Missouri and Illinois
18. Cairo Mississippi River Bridge (US 62, Cairo, IL)
19. Cairo I-57 Bridge (I-57, Cairo, IL)
20. Thebes Bridge (rail, Thebes, IL)
21. Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge (MO 34, Cape Girardeau, MO)
22. Grand Tower Pipeline Bridge (gas pipeline, Grand Tower, IL)
23. Chester Bridge (MO 51, Chester, IL)
24. Jefferson Barracks Bridge (I-255, South St. Louis, MO)
25. MacArthur Bridge (rail, St. Louis, MO)
26. Poplar Street Bridge (I-70, St. Louis, MO)
27. Eads Bridge (St. Louis, MO)
28. Martin Luther King Bridge (St. Louis, MO)
29. McKinley Bridge (St. Louis, MO)
30. Merchants Bridge (rail, St. Louis, MO)
31. Chain of Rocks Bridge (walking and biking, St. Louis, MO)
32. New Chain of Rocks Bridge (I-270, St. Louis, MO)
33. Clark Bridge (US 67, Alton, IL)
34. Louisiana Rail Bridge (rail, Louisiana, MO)
35. Champ Clark Bridge (US 54, Louisiana, MO)
36. Mark Twain Memorial Bridge (I-72, Hannibal, MO)
37. Wabash Bridge (rail, Hannibal, MO)
38. Quincy Memorial Bridge (US 24, Quincy, IL)
39. Bayview Bridge (US 24, Quincy, IL)
40. Quincy Rail Bridge (rail, Quincy, IL)
Connecting Iowa and Illinois
41. Keokuk-Hamilton Bridge (US 136, Keokuk, IA)
42. Keokuk Rail Bridge (rail, Keokuk, IA)
43. Fort Madison Toll Bridge (IA 2, Fort Madison, IA)
44. Burlington Rail Bridge (rail, Burlington, IA)
45. Great River Bridge (US 34, Burlington, IA)
46. Keithsburg Rail Bridge (rail, Keithsburg, IL)
47. Norbert F. Beckey Bridge (IA 92, Muscatine, IA)
48. I-280 Bridge (I-280, Davenport, IA)
49. Rock Island Centennial Bridge (Davenport, IA)
50. Government Bridge (Davenport, IA)
51. I-74 Bridge (I-74, Davenport, IA)
52. Fred Schwengel Memorial Bridge (I-80, LeClaire, IA)
amazon, nile, yang tze, volga and many others run through too much jungle or farmland to be likely in the running. i’ve a feeling the elbe would be a strong contender. berlin has more bridges than venice, according to one guidebook.
According to wikipedia 1/3 of Chinese people, well over 400,000,000 people, live in the Yangtze basin.
i stand corrected but then, how many bridges are there? the nile waters the fields on either side so a lot of egyptians also live following the river.
I suspect that the most bridges will be over “the longest minor river.” Building a bridge across the Mississippi or the Nile is a major undertaking, and so the emphasis would be on fewer, bigger bridges. Something the size of the Erie Canal would be easier to cross and would probably have more bridges for an equivalent distance and population density.
This is an interesting point, and does skew the results by quite a bit. For example, the wiki page for the Los Angeles River (50 miles long) lists 117 bridges, more than twice the number for the Lower Mississippi. No culverts, though.
The Indus has lots; but only a dozen or so major ones.
The Thames seems to have at least 200 bridges if you include footbridges along its 215 miles.
The Wikipedia article for the Danube lists 211 crossings, but some of them are dams instead of bridges and some of the bridges listed don’t exist anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crossings_of_the_Danube
I notice the Thames list includes a lot of tunnels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_underneath_the_River_Thames
The Pregel River has seven bridges just in Koenigsberg. It would be interesting to walk across them all someday.
Keep in mind that the river listed on “long river” lists is the Mississippi-Missouri. The Missouri is far longer than section of the “Mississippi” above St Louis, although it runs through less populous country. The Ohio may deserve consideration because it goes through a lot of cities.
(The “Mississippi” above St Louis or Cairo is probably misnamed. The Missouri provides the longer run, and if you discount that, the Ohio is by far the major branch at Cairo. One can argue that either the Ohio should run to the Gulf of Mexico, with the Mississippi as a tributary, or the Mississippi should originate in Pittsburgh, or maybe northern Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, both river names were established before any Europeans knew where they joined. I DO suspect that the number of bridges along the Ohio is larger than the Upper Mississippi.)
From the example the OP gives, I think he/she might actually be more interested in a formula that takes into account:
the frequency (density) of bridges; that is, how many bridges per unit of river length?; and
the width of the river (so the Harlem River would be “bridgier”, say, than the Los Angeles River; the lower Thames probably “bridgier” still; etc.).
Given a pretty decent geo-database (say, generated for 1:50,000-scale maps) and typical GIS software, it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with some answers, but it would entail a few weeks of real work if you wanted to be accurate and include a large area (perhaps even the whole planet). The hardest part might be deciding how to score a river’s width, since that obviously changes along the course of the river.
This is kind of thing that entails applying for a modest geography research grant, and publishing in an modestly respected journal in the built environment or human geography realms.