This site (down at the bottom) ,says that at 350 (meters?) the Crawford Street bridge is the widest bridge in the world.
Google image search inconclusive. I assume its the one in Providence R.I. Anybody know more about this?
Guinness list Sydney Harbour Bridge as the widest, but I think they are taking out of their hat.
Hmm.
According to guiness, it’s the Sydney Harbour Bridge at “48.8 meters (1,600 feet wide)”. Is it just me or does it sound like someone at guiness did some bad math? Or maybe they accidently added a decimal point?
According to this it’s the Blue Bridge in St. Petersburg, Russia at 97.3 meters.
I couldn’t find much about the Crawford Street Bridge except that it’s 1,147 feet which corresponds to your 350 meter, and that they basically paved over the river, so you can even really tell it’s a bridge. I assume a lot people don’t consider the Crawford Street a “real” bridge for this reason.
http://www.xcp.bfn.org/d.html
Hold on, it says it is 1600 Ft wide, making it about 488m wide.
Two railway tracks, 8 lanes of traffic, cyle lane & footway.
That is actually wider than the one you listed.
I meant you can’t even really tell it’s a bridge.
Why would I possibly think a bridge might be nearly a half kilometre wide? Doh…!
That Blue Bridge in St. Petersburg seems like a winner. The rest are just massive culverts over a narrow river stretch.
After a little more looking, the Sydney Harbor Bridge is 49 meters wide.
http://www.gids.nl/sydney/info.html
A meter is 3.3 feet not 33 feet!
(I wish I could edit my posts)
Guiness may also be considering only “longspan bridges” but they still screwed up their math on the website.
What is this, no pictures of the two widest bridges in the world?
You should also drink more Guinness too.
Just for your reference, the section of harbour which is traversed by the Sydney Harbour Bridge is certainly more than a narrow river stretch. From experience, I’d say it’s at least half the length of the Golden Gate I rather think.
The Sydney Harbour is one of the world’s great waterways. Hundreds of kilometers of safe foreshore are contained within it’s boundarys.
I’m the first to concede it’s not the widest bridge going obviously. Due to it’s myriad feeder routes of both highway and rail, it truly is an unusually functional bridge carrying a lot of different modes of transport everyday - so it deserves a bit of interest if only from an engineering point of view.
Down here we call it “The Old Coathanger” (due it’s appearance) and the engineers built the bridge simultaneously from both sides of the harbour to meet exactly at the middle. Apparently the steelwork was only misaligned by a quarter of an inch when they finally bolted both sides together - which is pretty cool considering the intricate lattice work of the steel involved.
During the Sydney Olympics a huge set of self illuminating stainless steel Olympic rings were hung on the bridge with each ring being 110 ft high. After the games, the rings were brought down and sold at auction. Believe it or not, a construction company owner from Brisbane bought the rings and currently has them standing up in the front yard of his construction yard. He turns them on every now and then but he kept burning out the local power grid so he’s not real popular with the local utility company!
Hey Boo Boo,
I was in Sydney at the Olympics in 2000 (and several times before), and right underneath the bridge during the closing ceremony celebrations and fireworks. It looked awesome then.
Its cool that the rings are still being put to some use.
BTW, the arch span of the Harbour Bridge is listed at 503m long.
Oh, I meant the Crawford St. Bridge and that one in Providence R.I. were like flat platform culverts rather than ‘real’ bridges.
Not the Harbour bridge in Sydney.
The Crawford Street Bridge IS the one in Providence.
Anyway, the Crawford Street Bridge referred to in the record is out of the running anyway as it has apparently been demolished:
from http://www.theledger.com/americanimp/0426_rhodeisland.html
There also seems to be a modern day “Crawford Street Bridge”, which may be a source of confusion:
(Warning - there’s a meta-refresh on that page to cycle you through his “slide show”)
Lewiston, NY, has much of its Main Street bridging the Erie Canal. The locals there refer to the bridge as the widest in the world, but I haven’t been able to come up with any numbers for it. Supposedly, travelling the Erie Canal at that point is like going through a long tunnel.
Park Avenue in New York City is a deck built over the once-exposed railroad tracks leading into Grand Central Station. I’ve heard it described as being actually a bridge, about 100 feet long and several miles wide. If you look closely at the edge of the sidewalk on either side, you’ll see the joints where the “bridge” starts.
The widest railroad bridge in the world in the arch span over the Hell Gate, on the East River. It is the only four-track railroad bridge in the world.
Often referred to as the Hell Gate Bridge, its real name is the East River Arch Bridge.
The new bridge that’s part of the Big Dig in Boston (The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge) is pretty wide. 183 feet (56 meters). That’s 10 lanes of traffic. The main span is 745 feet (230 m). I don’t know if that counts as “long-span”
The new Woodrow Wilson Bridge in DC will be pretty wide as well. 224 feet, 12 lanes.