Webuild inaugurates the twin bridge on the Danube (three times smaller) than the one on the Stretto- Corriere.it

Webuild has inaugurated the (smaller) twin of the future Strait Bridge. The two banks of the Danube in South-East Romania are now connected by the new one Braila bridge, the longest in the country with a total of 1,975 meters and the second longest suspended in continental Europe. The work was carried out by an international consortium led by Webuild, the company also at the head of the Eurolink consortium which will build the bridge over the Strait of Messina. CEO Pietro Salini says: «After the inauguration of two new stations of the M4 metro in Milan in recent days, today we are proud to cut the ribbon of another work, the Braila Bridge, which will improve and simplify the daily life of many people and businesses in the region, bringing them closer together and creating value».

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In fact, with the Braila bridge a new transit route opens up which is destined to profoundly change the mobility of the Romanian region: it goes from 45 minutes to go from one bank to the other to 2 minutes. It is also estimated that the bridge is crossed by 7,000 vehicles a day. The work is, with due proportions, a small bridge over the Strait. It has a deck suspended over the waters of the Danube at approx 40 meters high, thus allowing the passage of medium-sized ocean-going ships, and is supported by two supporting cables generated by the intertwining of over 18,000 steel wires.

The deck has 86 segments, with an average weight of 260 tons each, built in the nearby Braila factory of the Italian Fincantieri. For its construction, 21,000 tons of steel and about 12,000 cubic meters of reinforced concrete were used. The Braila Bridge, tested to withstand winds of up to 270 kilometres times and seismic phenomena of high intensity, is the result of collaboration with Ihi, the Japanese company that also built the Akashi Strait Bridge in Japan, the second longest suspension bridge in the world.

The bridge over the Strait: construction sites in March 2024?

Webuild is known for its ability to deliver major works in a short time: it has built 1,018 kilometers of bridges and viaducts worldwide. Among others, the Genoa San Giorgio Bridge, completed in 2020 in Italy ahead of schedule, the Third Bosphorus Bridge in Turkey, the largest hybrid suspension bridge in the world at the time of its construction, and the Long Beach International Gateway in California, among the tallest bridges in the United States.

For the Strait Bridge, the group spoke of a construction site and six years of work starting in March 2024. The final project is that of 2011, adapted however to the new technical, safety and environmental standards given that the construction area is seismic . “Braila – Salini concluded – represents, for the length of its central span, a 1:3 scale model of the bridge that will finally unite Sicily and Calabria. Projects that are first of all dreams that today our group has the honor of making concrete».