Bridges of Mexico: The Hermanos Serdán Blvd. Bicycle Viaduct in Puebla City

September 2017 (19.09170, -98.2296) Viaducto de Bicicleta de Puebla Ciudad

On September 24th I went with the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Team to investigate the September 19th Mexico Earthquake. The group was mostly interested in looking at landslides and soil settlement but I did manage to photograph a few bridges.

Puebla is a modern city and a showcase for Mexican culture. Among its many attractions is an elevated viaduct for bicyclists (and pedestrians) in the median of Hermanos Serdan Blvd. This structure is 7.6 km long and just one of several bike paths in the city. The photos above show the elevated bicycle roundabout at Hermanos Serdan Blvd and Avenue Francisco Villa in Sanctorum.

What's particularly nice about the viaduct is the diversity of structures. The roundabout is a steel truss on steel truss piers but there are also cable-stayed structures (shown above), long stretches of steel stringers on oddly crossed steel piers (shown below), as well as arches (see bottom photo). The one unifying feature is that all the structures are steel and they're all painted white. 

In the next couple of months we'll look at new and old bridge structures in Puebla, Morales, and Mexico City that I photographed between stops to study earthquake damage. Interested readers can also see a similar set of photos that I took following the 2003 Colima, Mexico Earthquake.

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