Drivers on the A10 ring road in Amsterdam can be forgiven for any confusion experienced when they see this incomplete section of highway bridge.

We’re not sure what happened – maybe the construction crew finished up early one Friday afternoon and by the following Monday had forgotten what they were supposed to be building?

Meanwhile in Tehran, a similar situation seems to be coming to an end. We’re told this bridge sat unconnected to anything for at least 8 years, but the construction currently visible at the north end of the bridge may mean that it will finally get put to use some day. Still a bit of a drop if you were to drive off the south end though…

Let us know if you find any more abandoned bridges.

Thanks to Asmir Babaca and Mazi.

The Laredo International Bridge 1 is one of four road bridges that cross the Rio Grande to connect the cities of Laredo, USA and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

The 320 m long bridge is officially known as the Gateway to the Americas International Bridge (Wikipedia) and, as we can see from this satellite shot, the sheer volume of cars waiting to get into the states really help it to live up to its name – nearly a million cars cross this bridge each year, albeit slowly.

There’s a webcam on the American side that shows a typical American street scene, while the webcam on the Mexican side seems to always show a scene very similar to what we can see in the satellite shot.

In the webcams you might also spot one of the 4 million pedestrians who cross the bridge on foot each year.

Laredo International Bridge 2, or officially the Juárez-Lincoln International Bridge (Wikipedia), was built in 1976 to alleviate traffic on the first bridge, and is only open to buses and non-commercial traffic.

Slightly shorter at 307 m it has six lanes, four or which head north into the US. All four northbound lanes appear to be continually gridlocked, which is hardly surprising when you hear that over 4 million non-commercial vehicles cross here every year.

Google’s Street View car never got close enough to see the bridge itself, but we can see the front of the border control building from a distance.

Next up is the Laredo International Bridge 3, or Colombia-Solidarity International Bridge (Wikipedia), which has eight lanes this time and of all the bridges so far carries the most commercial traffic – around 270,000 vehicles each year.

Our final road bridge is the Laredo International Bridge 4, or World Trade International Bridge (Wikipedia), which despite also having eight lanes, is only open to commercial vehicles – a LOT of them. In the past year this bridge has been crossed by nearly 1.2 million commercial vehicles.

It’s not only road bridges that connect the two countries here either – there’s also the Laredo International Railway Bridge, or Texas-Mexican Railway International Bridge (Wikipedia) which connects the Texas Mexican Railway in the US with Mexico’s Kansas City Railway.

Ironically, unlike the road bridges, the Google Street View car got close enough to the railway bridge for a photo opportunity.

As if that wasn’t enough bridges, plans are already underway for the construction of yet another road bridge and two more railway bridges.

For the full breakdown of statistical data about these bridges, see this traffic distribution chart at cityoflaredo.com.

Congratulations to Fraser, who finally got a suggestion published.

It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It’ll probably last about a week.

Lindisfarne is a tidal island, off the north-east coast of England, which thanks to having been home to a monastery since the 7th century AD, is also known as Holy Island.

The causeway that connects Lindisfarne to the mainland is flooded twice a day by the tide (you can see the tidemark on this section of the road), so drivers must be careful about when they start to cross. Refuge places are provided for the cars should they become stranded by quickly rising water.

Before the advent of cars those wishing to reach the monastery would have had to cross the sands on foot at low tide. Known as Pilgrim’s Way, we can see the markers that still define that path today, as well as small refuge boxes for those who choose a foolish time to attempt the walk.

Here’s the second refuge box on the Pilgrim’s Way, but following the markers along there are no people to be seen, probably because a large section of the path is under water.

Where the Pilgrim’s way finally meets land we find a nice modern-day maze of, er… something, and just south of here we finally come across the ancient ruins of the island’s monastery.

To the east of the monastery, we can also see the small Lindisfarne Castle and the old castle limekilns, which are in the care of the National Trust and open to visitors.

Elsewhere on the island there are monuments, some spectacular sections of coastline, lots of sand, and there’s even a lake for all you recursion junkies.

There’s more about the long history of Lindisfarne at Wikipedia, or have a look at this PDF of the island’s sights.

See also the previously featured Mont Saint Michel tidal island.

Especially for Spamboy.

Tinsley Viaduct is a two-tier road bridge in Sheffield, England; the first of its kind in the UK. It carries the M1 motorway over a 1033 metre section of the Don Valley, and is one of Sheffield’s most prominent landmarks. Sadly there’s not much to see from our viewpoint.

Fortunately for us however, the Tinsley Viaduct runs right past the Tinsley Towers, a fantastic pair of defunct cooling towers. Due to their extremely close proximity to the viaduct, they were left standing when the power plant they served was demolished in the 70s.

As it happens, “extremely close” is a bit of an understatement – the nearest tower stands only 12 metres from the M1!

Actually, “stood” is the correct term I’m afraid.

Following years of strengthening work to the viaduct (and presumably advances in demolition technology), the towers were finally brought down¹ in the early hours of Sunday the 24th August. You can watch a video of the spectacular destruction of the towers over at the BBC.

Thanks to Radio 2 and the ever informative Jonathan Rawle.

The Oil Rocks, 50km off the coast of Azerbaijan, is effectively a small city that has been constructed from interconnected oil platforms and residential areas, all sitting atop rocks, piles of sand and landfill.

Back in 1949, the Oil Rocks were the site of the world’s first successful offshore venture in oil drilling, and by the 1960s 21 million tons of oil was being extracted each year.

Of course, this level of extraction couldn’t continue forever, and the quality and quantity of the oil started falling in the 80s. With it, the upkeep of the platforms and interconnecting roads fell, and today about a third of the oil wells are either inoperative or inaccessible, and many of the connecting roads have become submerged.

Despite the conditions, the platforms still have a combined population of about 5,000 men, who work in week-long offshore shifts, and collectively they produce over half of the total crude oil output of Azerbaijan.

Several action sequences in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough are set and filmed on the Oil Rocks, where terrorists used a giant helicopter saw to cut the oil pipes. Obviously.

There’s a thorough history at window2baku.com, Wikipedia has a couple of choice facts, and there’s a photo of the interconnecting bridges at travel-images.com.

Update: What we’re seeing here is actually not the Oil Rocks, but is very close. Oil Rocks is further out to sea, unfortunately in an low res area. You can get an idea of how big Oil Rocks really is from the OpenAerialMap image.

Thanks to Samir Aliyev and Panda32 in the comments.