Cable-Stayed Bridges - Suez Canal Peace Bridge (3)

A slightly closer look at the Suez Canal Peace Bridge. We were staying in Cairo when some of my engineer friends took me to see this bridge. As we drove across the desert, we would sometimes see a lone man sitting on the side of the road beside a pyramid of melons.

We were riding in a new Mercedes, but it got a flat in the middle of the desert. The driver got out, jacked up the car, and changed the flat tire while we remained in air conditioned comfort. It must have been 120 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

I had just given a talk on earthquake design. I can't remember now if it was at Cairo University or at the bridge department, but I do remember being surprised to see more than half the engineers were women, all with their faces covered.

In order to get to the bridge, we had to take a ferry across the Suez Canal into the Sinai Peninsula. There was a long line of cars, but the driver just drove ahead and cut to the front of the line. We got onto the next ferry and arrived just in time for our tour.

The Israelis controlled the Sinai after fierce fighting in 1973 but they gave it back to the Egyptians for a kind of peace. For hundreds of years before that, it was controlled Turkey. We'll take a closer look this bridge tomorrow.

Cable-Stayed Bridges - Suez Canal Peace Bridge (3) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Cable-Stayed Bridges - The Suez Canal Peace Bridge (2)

We've left North America for the boundary between Africa and Asia.

The Suez Canal connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. There used to be a swing bridge across the Suez, but it was destroyed during one of the wars between Egypt and Israel.

When I asked the project engineer what was the biggest problem building this bridge, he said it was removing all of the land mines. I guess that's why they called it (hopefully) the Peace Bridge. We'll take a closer look at this interesting structure tomorrow.

Cable-Stayed Bridges - The Suez Canal Peace Bridge (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Cable-Stayed Bridges - Great River Bridge

Back on the California Zephyr traveling east from Denver. I took this photo while crossing the Mississippi River between Burlington, Iowa and Gulf Port, Illinois.

Although my photo (through a train window) isn't great, it does show an impressive looking bridge. I took it from the BNSF Railroad Bridge, a series of through trusses (with a swing span for the shipping channel) about a mile south of the Great River Bridge carrying I-34.

The I-34 bridge was built in the 1990s to replace a two lane steel structure that had been built in 1917 and was in terrible shape. Construction on the new bridge continued despite a series of floods (that destroyed the construction offices) and the bridge opened in 1993. Its a single tower cable-stayed bridge with a main span of 660 ft and a total length of 1245 ft. The cables are arranged in a fan and the two-legged, H-shaped tower stands about 300 ft above the Mississippi River. The bridge carries five traffic lanes and provides 60 ft of vertical clearance for ships traveling on the river.

The bridge is owned and maintained by the Iowa DOT. I wonder if it was designed by the Iowa DOT as well? I was hoping to find an entry in Structurae that would give some references to books and articles about the bridge but I wasn't successful. I did find some good information at John Weeks website. I believe he's gathered information on all the bridges across the Mississippi River.

The tower foundations go through 90 feet of weak material before reaching bedrock. Although I couldn't find a reference to the construction material, it looks like a reinforced concrete tower (and a steel girder superstructure). The bridge has unequal spans, the tower is placed in the middle of the river, there are more cables on the west side and there are additional lifter cables to adjust for seasonal temperature changes; which must have made for a very challenging design project.

Cable-Stayed Bridges - Great River Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.