Mexico's Bridges: Viaduct Beltran (4)

Looking north at the Viaduct Beltran. There appears to be a short pier in front of the abutment.

The superstructure is a single continuous, segmentally constructed box girder, with two long center spans and two short end spans. The superstructure sits on the supports without transferring moment into the piers, which suggests that it was perfectly balanced during construction. That must be why it was built with two piers under the center of the bridge.

I wonder if this long bridge has prestressing tendons? I'm not sure what the longest reinforced concrete box girder bridge is, but this looks past the limit. The haunched girders undoubtedly helps.

I couldn't find any information on this bridge or on the other long bridges on Route 54D. It seems that the many amazing engineering achievements in Mexico get little publicity outside their borders.

Mexico's Bridges: Viaduct Beltran (4) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.