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}} Tinsley Viaduct is a two-tier road bridge in Sheffield, England; the first of its kind in the UK. It carries the M1 and the A631 1033 metres over the Don Valley, from Tinsley to Wincobank, also crossing the Sheffield Canal, the Midland Main Line and the former South Yorkshire Railway line from Tinsley Junction to Rotherham Central. The Supertram route to Meadowhall runs below part of the viaduct on the trackbed of the South Yorkshire Railway line to Barnsley. ==History== The viaduct was opened in March 1968 and cost £6 million to build. The structure is unusual in that it is built as steel box girders, at a time when most long span bridges were being built of post tension concrete deck design. This use of steel allowed a significant cost saving over alternatives methods, but become controversial after three serious disasters, when new bridges collapsed in 1970 (West Gate Bridge and Cleddau Bridge) and 1971 (South Bridge (Koblenz)). Fifty-one people were killed in these failures, leading in the UK to the formation of the Merrison Committee. The report of the Merrison committee resulted in the temporary closure of two of the carriageways on the lower deck and two on the upper deck, the installation of extra steel strengthening bands around the bridge's support columns and other works which were completed in 1983. A further program of strengthening was completed in 2006. The recent works to strengthen the bridge were a very complex operation, with a lot of the work happening inside the box beam spine. The works took over 3 years and cost £82 million (14 times the original bridge building cost). The strengthening project won the British Construction Industry Awards' Major Project Award in 2005. Although originally designed to carry 6 lanes, during the strengthening work the M1 was permanently reduced to 4 lanes following an EU directive on load bearing capacity to allow for the introduction of 40-ton trucks in the UK. This arrangement allows the third lane in each direction to join from Junction 34 to make the very busy junction safer.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=£82 Million M1 Tinsley Viaduct strengthening work nears completion )〕 The viaduct is balanced on rollers to allow for thermal expansion and contraction, and the route weaves slightly in order to make its way past obstacles. The viaduct, due to its construction, is very flexible. Movement may be felt on the lower deck as the traffic passes overhead. The Meadowhall Shopping Centre lies in the valley to the west; to the east is the Blackburn Meadows sewage works. 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「Tinsley Viaduct」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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