EAST BRIDGE MAP
Thanks to the Great Belt, every Dane saves on average 6.3 hours a year.
The Great Belt Fixed Link is a multipart 11-mile (18-kilometer)-long crossing that carries rail and vehicular traffic between Denmark’s two largest islands, Zealand and Funen. Its centerpiece is the East Bridge, a suspension bridge with a central span of 5,328 feet (1,624 meters), the longest suspended span in Europe.
To date the largest engineering undertaking in the country’s history, the link across the Great Belt strait consists of two bridges and a tunnelthe East Bridge, the West Bridge, and the East Tunnelthat were built to enhance connectivity within Denmark and, more generally, the region’s transportation network. With the completion of this link and the later 0resund Bridge (2000; see here), drivers could travel between Scandinavia and mainland Europe. The link shaves nearly an hour from the former ferry crossing time, with a 34 kroner one-way toll.
EAST BRIDGE MAP Photo Gallery
The East Bridge is a 4.2-mile (6.8-kilometer)-long steel vehicular bridge that connects Zealand (where Copenhagen is located) and Sprog0, now uninhabited but once the place where “wayward” women were institutionalized. To accommodate the span, the island’s land mass was increased fourfold, built up with earth dredged during construction. COWI, the lead designers, also designed the 0resund Bridge. COINFRA, an international consortium of contractors, built it. The bridge consists of a central span, two 1,755-foot (535-meter) side spans, and two approach bridges that are 8,346 feet (2,544 meters) and 5,092 feet (1,552 meters) long. Its tapered concrete pylons, at 768 feet (234 meters), are taller than most anything else in Denmark. If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.
The West Bridge (1994) is a 4.1-mile (6.6-kilometer)-long concrete bridge, supported by sixty-two piers, that carries cars and trains between Funen and Sprog0. At Sprog0, the West Bridge rail and motorways split: the railway continues on to Zealand via the East Tunnel (1996), two parallel tubes 5 miles (8 kilometers) long that were bored below bedrock between Zealand and Sprog0.
Before the East Bridge was built, various simulations were conducted to determine the type of design that would best accommodate the ships crossing the complex waters of the Great Belt, which is part of the international shipping route between the North Sea and the Baltic. Tests showed that a span of at least 5,248 feet (1,600 meters) was needed if the existing navigation route was to be unaffected. Because of these length requirements, a cable-stayed span was considered but abandoned; the longest such bridge is the Russky Bridge (2012) with a 3,622-foot (1,104-meter)-long central span.
A view from beneath the pylons, which are heavily reinforced at water level to resist the impact of rogue tankers.
The East Bridge cables were installed by aerial spinning, and spun at an unprecedented rate of up to 285 tons (259 tonnes) per day over a period of 112 days by laborers recruited mainly from the ski-lift industry in the French Alps. At 928 feet (283 meters), the bridge’s towers are the height of a ninety-story skyscraper. Its record main span is almost a quarter-mile (367 meters) longer than the previous titleholder, the Great Belt Fixed Link in Denmark, which also opened in 1998.
