Hyogo Prefecture, Japan Bridges: Port-Liner Elevated Railway in Downtown Kobe

November 2013 (34.69517 Degrees, 135.19599 Degrees) Port-Liner Elevated Railway

After visiting the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge we checked into our hotel in Kobe and walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. In these photos we are walking under the Port-Liner Elevated Railway which turns southeast from Sannomiya Station through downtown Kobe towards Port Island. This area had a great deal of damage during the 1995 Kobe earthquake and I managed to snap a few photos of the many improvements with my iPhone.

The bridges have been retrofitted with steel column casings and viscous fluid dampers, which will hopefully prevent severe damage during the next earthquake. However, the use of 'C' Bents and short radius curves will result in large superstructure displacements and large torsional and flexural moments in the supports.

Hyogo Prefecture, Japan Bridges: Port-Liner Elevated Railway in Downtown Kobe by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Tokyo, Japan's Bridges: Adachi-ku Bridges across the Sumida River

March 2012 (35.753 Degrees, 139.770 Degrees) Adachi-Ku Bridges

Continuing into the Adachi Ward where the wide Ogu Road Bridge and the narrow Nippori Toneri Railway Bridge cross the Sumida River. The bridges continue across the Arakawa (the highway bridge rests briefly on an embankment between the two rivers) and then they continue north with the elevated railway in the roadway's median.

The Adachi-Odai Station is part of a railway bridge between the two rivers. Since it was built in 2008 the Nippori Toneri Bridge must have been built at about the same time (although the Ogu Road Bridge could be older).

Across the Sumida the roadway bridge has a continuous three span steel girder superstructure and the rail bridge has a three span concrete box superstructure. We'll see these two bridges again when we turn around and follow the Arakawa back downstream.

Tokyo, Japan's Bridges: Adachi-ku Bridges across the Sumida River by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.