Saturday, October 1, 2011

India's Bridges: Highway Structure South of Pondicherry (1)

We've gone from the west coast to the east coast of India, and a couple things are apparent. Ox carts have replaced camel carts and the climate has changed from grasslands to tropical rainforests. And the people? My friend Brian likes to say that the Tamil Nadu are more laid back since their location protected them from some of the worst battles between the different groups that make up India.

Another theme that we've been following are the limits of what is a bridge. India has excellent transportation engineers but limited resources, and so they don't want to spend more on a highway facility than is required.

This structure south of Pondicherry allows high flows of water to go over the deck while low flow can travel under it. But is it a bridge?

We'll take another look at this interesting structure tomorrow.

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