The Gibraltar Bridge

[Zoid]

Will it be built? A bridge spanning 9 miles over the Straits of Gibraltar at the entryway to the Mediterranean would be the longest and tallest ever built. It would connect cultures of Christianity and Islam and potentially increase ties between the economies of Europe and Africa.

Stats:
Location: Strait of Gibraltar. Links Spain and Morocco.
Length: 9 miles, Two spans of 4 1/2 miles each
Height: Each tower is 3,000 feet tall. Twice as high as the world's tallest skyscraper.
Width: 5 traffic lanes, 2 breakdown lanes in each direction
Road Deck Material: Fiberglass
Length of Wire Cables: 1,000,000 miles (Enough to circle the Earth almost 30 times)
Closest living relative: Akashi bridge in Japan, world's longest suspension bridge at 12,828 feet.
Cost: $15 billion
Dangers: Wind speeds of 80 mph at tops of towers, ship collision, ocean currents, traffic, Sahara Desert dust storms

Who will pay for it? Spain/Morocco? No way! EU? Not likely... Smuggling and illegal immigration will increase drastically. The situation on the Mexican/American border will be a picnic compared to this...

Security is another issue, Gibraltar Straits is one of the most heavily trafficked routes on the entire planet. All it takes is an supertanker with a drunken captain or engine failure... A disaster waiting to happen really...

[Az]

If it will happen , I won't live to see it.

*CASE CLOSED*

[chequita guevara]

Go for it.

[Ecthy]

Why not?

And then:

Why?

[Kropotkin]

I don't see the point of building it in the near future. There's not enough economic incentive for that as particulary the southern region is economically weak.

[ixnay]

Big bridges are always cool. Go ahead and build it.

[germanos]

Sounds very futuristic and unrealistic. Most of the reasons for not building is you already mentioned. Furthermore it looks that is only on the drawing board, with nothing eber built even closely resembling this, so it will propably will cost more close to 100 billion. Not worth it.

And I think before that bridge between Christianity and Islam will be built in concrete there is still a lot of bridgebuilding culture-wise to do.

[Ecthy]

bull.... when it comes to cool bridges, noone cares about culture

[Bosh]

what about a darnelles bridge?

[DaShi]

Anyone want to preorder it? I'm letting it go cheap.

[Bosh]

now that's strange, I post and as soon as the page refreshes I'm not the newest post anymore

[Ecthy]

We call that phenomenon "Apolyton Off-Topic".

[KrazyHorse]

Re: The Gibraltar Bridge

Originally posted by Kamrat X
Will it be built? A bridge spanning 9 miles over the Straits of Gibraltar at the entryway to the Mediterranean would be the longest and tallest ever built. It would connect cultures of Christianity and Islam and potentially increase ties between the economies of Europe and Africa.

Stats:
Location: Strait of Gibraltar. Links Spain and Morocco.
Length: 9 miles, Two spans of 4 1/2 miles each
Height: Each tower is 3,000 feet tall. Twice as high as the world's tallest skyscraper.
Width: 5 traffic lanes, 2 breakdown lanes in each direction
Road Deck Material: Fiberglass
Length of Wire Cables: 1,000,000 miles (Enough to circle the Earth almost 30 times)
Closest living relative: Akashi bridge in Japan, world's longest suspension bridge at 12,828 feet.
Cost: $15 billion
Dangers: Wind speeds of 80 mph at tops of towers, ship collision, ocean currents, traffic, Sahara Desert dust storms

Who will pay for it? Spain/Morocco? No way! EU? Not likely... Smuggling and illegal immigration will increase drastically. The situation on the Mexican/American border will be a picnic compared to this...

Security is another issue, Gibraltar Straits is one of the most heavily trafficked routes on the entire planet. All it takes is an supertanker with a drunken captain or engine failure... A disaster waiting to happen really...

a) Why make it a suspension bridge?

b) Why do you need such a high span?

c) What's the depth of the Med across the Strait?

We built a 12.9 kilometer bridge from PEI to New Brunswick built in 250 meter segments on columns...

http://www.confederationbridge.com/

[Asher]

The confederation bridge is too low and the columns too close together to allow for the kind of traffic the straits of Gibraltar get, I think.

[Zoid]

Re: Re: The Gibraltar Bridge

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


a) Why make it a suspension bridge?

b) Why do you need such a high span?

c) What's the depth of the Med across the Strait?

We built a 12.9 kilometer bridge from PEI to New Brunswick built in 250 meter segments on columns...

http://www.confederationbridge.com/

a) cause there´s no other way to build a bridge of these proportions IIRC.

b) You mean such a long span?

c) a 1000 meters. But there´s a underwater plateu that they might use for the mid tower. Then it´s only 432 meters.