Sunshine Skyway Bridge
Wednesday, 5th April 2006 by
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge is the world's longest cable-stayed concrete bridge, with a length of over 29,000 feet. It connects St. Petersburg in Pinellas County to Palmetto in Manatee County, Florida.
A two lane bridge was built in 1954 and upgraded to four lanes in 1971. In 1980 disaster struck when the SS Summit Venture collided with the bridge in a storm, destroying 1200 feet of the southbound bridge. The northbound bridge took all of the traffic whilst construction of the current bridge began in 1982 and finished in 1987 at a cost of $245 million. The original bridge was then demolished but the approaches were left to be used as fishing piers. Just to be careful, the piers of the main span of the new bridge are surrounded by large concrete barriers called "dolphins" that can apparently protect the bridge from collisions with freighters much larger than the Summit Venture.
Thanks: drinklime, Jeff, Infinity & Eric T. Simon.
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The wikipedia link is missing!!!!!! Here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge
😉
yep the bridge looks like shit though too bad
The bridge also happens to be the local’s favorite place to commit suicide. Seriously.
While the Sunshine Skyway is indeed the longest total bridge, it’s cable-stayed span of 1,200 feet (between the towers) is significantly smaller than that of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge over the Cooper River between Charleston and Mt. Pleasant, SC. The Ravenel Bridge was completed in July of 2005 (a year ahead of schedule) but the current Google images show it under construction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ravenel_Bridge View Placemark
The text said longest cable stayed concrete bridge.
Anyone else notie that the actual towers are missing from the google image? The bridge shadow seems to wipe them out. You cna see the base of the cables and the tip of one tower, but the middle segment is gone.
Take a look.
Salguod – they’re sorta there. The image is actually pretty overexposed. The brightness of the seemingly white road is blinding out the ability to see the thin cables.
They cut the fishing piers too short!!!