Turkey recently opened a bridge across the Dardanelles Strait, which is located at the southwestern end of the Sea of Marmara. The Sea of Marmara is the relatively small body of water between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea. The northeastern connection to the Black Sea is the famous Bosporus.
So, Turkey decided that connecting the west end of the country to the much larger eastern portion, and bypassing Istanbul was a good idea. For one thing, the traffic around Istanbul is probably fierce. For another, the only way to cross the Dardanelles before the bridge was a ferry that could take awhile. (Hours, apparently.)
So, at the cost of a couple billion Euro plus, the bridge got built. It's now the world's longest suspension bridge. I point that out because there are other, longer, "causeway" type bridges, such as the one at the head of Hangzhou Bay in China, which is about 22 miles long, and makes it a lot easier to get from Ningbo to Shanghai.
This article from Popular Science gets into all the details:
At 15,118 feet across, this new suspension bridge is the longest in the world
The article discusses the notable dimensions of the bridge that have symbolic meaning. The name of the bridge, 1915 Çanakkale, commemorates a WWI battle near there.
No comments:
Post a Comment