the 5 most highest bridges in the world

The World highest bridges

1. Beipanjiang Bridge Duge

Dugexiang, Guizhou, China
1,854 feet high / 565 meters high
2,362 foot span / 720 meter span
2016
World's Highest Bridge

Toppling all previous spans for height, the new Beipanjiang Bridge Duge will open in 2016 as the first crossing to ever surpass the 500 meter height barrier as well as becoming the first cable stayed bridge to ever hold the title of The World’s Highest Bridge.

the 5 most highest bridges in the world

No other region on earth has as many high bridges as China’s remote Western Province of Guizhou and there is no waterway within its borders with a greater collection of super-high bridge spans than the mighty Beipan River. Translated as the North Winding River, the BeipanJiang flows on a North-South rift that divides the Western and Eastern halves of Guizhou.

The vertical limestone cliffs drop so deep that much of the river is in shadow during the day. Spaced every 50 kilometers along its length are a collection of epic road and railway bridges that have pushed the boundaries of China’s bridge engineering community.

Due to be completed in 2016, the G56 expressway is the last of Guizhou’s great East-West routes that will allow easy access into nearby Yunnan Province across terrain that was previously inaccessible to normal cars and trucks.

The entire 4-lane divided highway stretches an incredible 2,935 kilometers from the city of Hanghzou near Shanghai to the border of Burma near Tibet. The extreme geography along the G56 has produced not only the world’s highest bridge over the Beipanjiang River near Duge, Guizhou but also the World’s Highest Suspension Bridge several kilometers further west near Puli, Yunnan.

All of this high bridge insanity began in 2001 when the mighty beast of the Beipan River summoned the construction of the World’s Highest Railway Bridge some 275 meters above a boulder-strewn crevasse on the Shuibai Railway.

Two years later that triumph was followed by the river’s first road bridge record when the Beipanjiang Bridge Huajiang opened in 2003 surpassing the 300 meter height threshold as well as becoming the first suspension bridge in the world to surpass the height of Colorado’s Royal Gorge bridge after a 74-year reign.

This was followed by a succession of bridges both high and super-high including the Beipanjiang Bridge Hukun on the G60 expressway, the Beipanjiang Bridge on the Shuipan expressway with the world’s longest span high-level beam bridge, the Beipanjiang Bridge Wang’an expressway and the Beipanjiang Bridge Zhenfeng.

But in 2016 the Beipan will deliver its two biggest high bridge gifts ever in the form of the Beipanjiang Railway Bridge Qinglong - the world’s highest “High-Speed” railway bridge at 295 meters and the colossal Beipanjiang Bridge Duge at 564 meters in height.

Other engineering honors Duge can claim include having the second longest steel trussed cable stayed span and the tenth tallest bridge tower in the world at 269 meters.

Until the year 2000, the experience of traveling around Guizhou was a grueling and arduous one that often took days along a dangerous network of older, 2-lane national roads. Despite a land mass slightly smaller then Great Britain or the U.S. state of Washington this outdated infrastructure limited the kind of growth that had been underway in the Eastern Provinces where accessibility had been improving steadily and rapidly since the early 1990s.

The first hint of Guizhou’s high bridge aspirations came in 2001 when the Liuguanghe beam bridge opened as the World’s Highest Bridge on a 2-lane expressway between the capital city of Guiyang and the smaller county of Bijie in the Northwest corner of the Province.

In the 15 years that followed, expressway construction went into full gear with four and now six-lane expressways connecting cities both large and small regardless of how difficult the mountain terrain may be.

An old saying states that in Guizhou there are no three days without rain, no three acres without a mountain and no three coins in any pocket. They may have to amend that and add that there are no three kilometers of expressway without a high bridge!

Today the Province of Guizhou is home to more high bridges then every other country on earth combined. By 2020 Guizhou will have more then 250 bridges over 100 meters high as measured from the road or rail deck to the water.

Compare that with Italy which has the world’s second greatest number of high bridges with only 40 spans exceeding 100 meters in height. Of the world’s 20 super-high spans that exceed 300 meters from deck to water, all are in China except for 3.

2. Siduhe Bridge

Yesanguanzhen, Hubei, China
1,627 feet high / 496 meters high
2,952 foot span / 900 meter span
2009

With a roadway 1,627 feet (496 mtrs) above the water, the Siduhe River bridge is the latest Chinese champ to take the record as the highest bridge in the world. Opened on November 15th, 2009, it is the 3rd Chinese bridge in less than a decade to claim the title of “World’s Highest Bridge” and is a symbol of just how fast and how far China’s highway infrastructure has come in such a short period of time.

Located about 50 miles (80 km) south of the famous 3 Gorges region of the Yangtze River in China’s mountainous Hubei Province, the Siduhe suspension bridge is just one of several amazing structures on the last 300 mile (483 km) link of the 1,350 mile (2,175 km) long West Hurong highway that now connects Shanghai on the Pacific coast with the cities of Chongqing and Chengdu in the west.

The 8 highest of China’s many high bridges were all built after 2000 and are located primarily in the 3 western Provinces of Guizhou, Hubei and Chongqing. All 8 of these bridges exceed 900 feet (274 meters) in height and rank among the world’s 12 highest while four have held the world record for highest road or rail bridge. Even more amazing, 6 of these bridges are higher than Colorado’s Royal Gorge, the former world’s highest bridge from 1929 to 2001.

It would only be appropriate that the highest bridge in the world is also on the greatest bridge “high-way” in the world. Stretching 300 miles (483 km) from Yichang and the 3 Gorges dam in the east to the city of Zhongxian in the west, this 4-lane engineering marvel has more than half a dozen spectacular bridges that exceed 500 feet (150 meters) in height including Zhijinghe, the highest roadway arch bridge in the world.

This more direct route bypasses one of the toughest and most mountainous stretches of the Yangtze River. What once took more than a day of travel on dangerous mountain roads or a Yangtze river boat can now be safely traversed in 5 hours.

The success of the route also owes as much to the construction of the numerous tunnels that punch through dozens of towering peaks that blocked the highway’s path. One of the more impressive of these tunnels leads to the east end of the Siduhe bridge and makes for one of the world’s more dramatic bridge introductions.

With a span of 2,952 feet (900 mtrs), Siduhe bridge is a fairly typical long span Chinese suspension bridge with H-frame concrete towers, a truss stiffened road deck and unsuspended side spans. One aspect of its construction that was not so ordinary relates to its extreme height. Due to the remote, inaccessible river canyon, the engineers decided to experiment and instead of using a blimp or helicopter to drag the first pilot line across the gorge, they would use a rocket. Over 3,281 feet (1000 meter) of tether was attached to the back end of a 4 foot (1.5 mtr) long rocket and blasted across the deep river gorge.

Also unusual is the termination of the east end bridge cables into a long tunnel foundation deep under the steep slope of the mountain.

Siduhe is so high that its closest rival in Mexico is over 100 meters lower. It is 672 feet (205 meters) higher than Colorado’s Royal Gorge bridge. The structure also has the unique distinction of being the only bridge in the world where a person falling from the deck can reach terminal velocity - the speed at which a falling object will no longer accelerate. With so many unprecedented superlatives, the Siduhe River bridge is unlikely to lose its lofty height record for sometime to come.

Siduhe translates to Four Crossings River. “Si” means four while “du” means crossings and “he” means river. The name probably came from the Red Army’s famous Four Crossings of the Chishui River in Guizhou Province during Chairman Mat Tse Tung’s Long March in 1935.

A trip along the G50 expressway to Siduhe bridge is a truly spectacular experience as you will be treated to an assortment of huge bridges of every size and variety.

West of Siduhe there is the Zhijinghe bridge, the world’s highest roadway arch that soars 965 feet (294 meters) above the river gorge. East of the bridge there is the incredible parade of 200 meter high monsters including the Tieluoping cable stayed bridge, the Shuanghekou beam bridge and finally the Longtanhe viaduct - a multi span concrete beam bridge that exceeded Germany’s Kochertal as the world’s largest and highest beam bridge viaduct. (France’s Millau is still the world’s highest viaduct overall).

3. Puli Bridge

Pulixiang, Yunnan, China
1,591 feet high / 485 meters high
2,060 foot span / 628 meter span
2015

Puli Bridge surprised and shocked the bridge community when it become the world's second highest suspension bridge in 2015 with a deck 485 meters over the surface of Puli creek. The inaccessible terrain on the east and west slopes along Puli Creek made it difficult for the bridge engineers to create an exact topographic model of the bottom of the Puli Creek canyon and once rock stability was ensured near the towers there was little need for them to find out how far down the elevation of the creek was. In 2014 I was able to measure the height from the construction catwalk of the main cables confirming a vertical drop of 485 meters. With the center of the span at around 1,828 meters, the bottom of the nearby Gexiang River Gorge is approximately 600 meters lower at around 1,228 meters elevation.

The main span of 628 meters is unique among China's highest suspension bridges in that it has a thin, steel box deck girder instead of the usual truss. The Longjiang Bridge - also in Yunnan Province - utilizes an aerodynamic box deck girder. The entire main span of Puli is composed of 52 segments of 12 meters in length.

Puli Bridge will remain the highest bridge in Yunnan Province until the Jinshajiang Bridge Jin'an surpasses it in 2021.

The first pilot line for the main cable was shot across the canyon tethered to the back end of a rocket in early 2013. This is only the 3rd time this has ever been done after the Siduhe and Lishuihe Bridges.

The span is part of the new G56 expressway that connects the city of Xuanwei, Yunnan with Liupanshui, Guizhou as well as the G76 expressway in Bijie, Guizhou.

This entire Yunnan/Guizhou border region is becoming a new hot spot of high Chinese bridges. In addition to Puli they include the nearby Beipanjiang Bridge Duge which is the World's Highest Bridge as well as the Beipanjiang Railway, Beipanjiang Shuipan and Dimuhe Bridges.