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The Baluarte Bridge ((スペイン語:Puente Baluarte)), officially the Baluarte Bicentennial Bridge ((スペイン語:Puente Baluarte Bicentenario)), is a cable-stayed bridge in Mexico. It is located between the municipalities of Concordia in Sinaloa and Pueblo Nuevo in Durango, along the Durango–Mazatlán highway, Mexico 40D. The bridge has a total length of ,〔 with a central cable-stayed span of . With the road deck at 〔 above the valley below, the Baluarte Bridge is the highest cable-stayed bridge in the world, the third-highest bridge overall and the highest bridge in the Americas.〔 Construction of the bridge began in 2008, it was inaugurated in January 2012 and opened to traffic in late 2013. The bridge forms part of a new highway linking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of northern Mexico and has reduced the travelling time between Durango and Mazatlán from approximately 6 to 2.5 hours.〔 ==Structure and construction== The bridge's four-lane roadway, wide by long, is supported at a height of above the Baluarte riverbed by 12 piers, two of which are also pylons (towers). Each of the two pylons measures at its base, widens in the centre to carry the roadway before tapering upwards to wide at its top; the taller, P5, is high.〔 76 steel cables pass over saddles in the pylons to form 152 suspenders in a two plane semi-fan layout. The tallest intermediate pier, P9, is high.〔(El Puente Baluarte ) (includes technical diagrams)〕 It crosses a gorge in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains with a clearance of below the deck, substantially taller than the Eiffel Tower. Its clearance is higher than that of the previous record-holder, France's Millau Viaduct, which has a clearance of . The bridge's central span, long, is also the longest cable-stayed span in North America, longer than that of the John James Audubon Bridge in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Construction on the bridge began on 21 February 2008. The work was carried out by a consortium that included Tradeco Infraestructura, IDINSA, Aceros Corey and VSL México,〔 which was awarded the contract in May 2007 by the Mexican transport and communications ministry, the SCT, beating two other higher-priced bidders.〔 The cost has risen significantly from the original bid of 1.28 billion pesos (US$118 million); according to an SCT official, this is due, among other things, to the number of structures involved in such a project. The work is being funded by Mexico's National Infrastructure Fund (Fonadin) and the Durango-Mazatlán Trust (Fiduma). It is planned that the cost of the bridge will be recovered by concessionary fees from the highway's operator. The choice of a cable-stayed design was made to enable the construction to proceed outward from each of the two main pylons, thus making it unnecessary to build an expensive and time-consuming falsework.〔 By January 2012, the bridge's construction had required the use of 1,500 workers and engineers, of steel and of concrete. of rock were excavated to lay the bridge's foundations.〔 The Baluarte Bridge construction is part of an 18 billion peso (US$1.44 billion) project to build a new highway connecting Durango with Mazatlán across some of Mexico's most rugged mountains. The cost of the bridge itself has been put at 2.18 billion pesos (US$158.7 million).〔 It will replace a notoriously dangerous road over the mountains, which are known locally as "the Devil's Backbone".〔 The old road was built in the 1940s in terrain so difficult that mules had to be used to bring in supplies for the construction workers. It is the only crossing through the mountains for . The new Mazatlán–Durango highway will include 63 tunnels and 32 bridges, eight of which will be over high.〔 When completed, the new highway is expected to slash the travelling time between Durango and Mazatlán from eight hours to two and a half.〔 It is intended to form part of an eventual road link between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Mexico.〔 Around 2,000 vehicles are expected to use the bridge daily.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Baluarte Bridge」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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