Millau Viaduct: the tallest bridge in the world built in just 3 years

This bridge, unique in several respects, is located in France, near the city of Millau, department of Aveyron. Disputes about the feasibility of its construction have been ongoing for several years, and after it was built, it was equipped with an incredible number of devices that monitor the safety of this grandiose design.

The construction of the Millau cable-stayed bridge began in October 2001, and already 3 years later, in December 2004, the facility was commissioned. The bridge is located on the high-speed highway that connects Paris and the city of Beziers, in the south of France. But in this place, where the route crosses the Tarn River, (even before the construction of the viaduct), the old bridge in the city of Millau functioned, which significantly impeded traffic due to kilometers of traffic jams. In order to increase throughput and free the city from exhaust gases, it was decided to build the Millau Viaduct, which crosses the Tarn Valley to the west of the city.

The authors of the viaduct project are Michelle Virlocho and Norman Foster. The bridge has a length of 2,460 meters and 4 lanes for traffic with a width of 32 meters. But the main thing that distinguishes this viaduct from many other similar projects is the height of the supports. The bridge rests on 7 supports of different heights. The average height of the roadway with respect to the bottom of the river valley is about 270 meters. Six central spans are 342 meters long, and two extreme spans are 204 meters. At the same time, the height of the longest support is almost 245 meters.

Millau Viaduct is an outstanding engineering facility in two ways. He owns a record of the height of the support of the bridge with the pylon, which is 343 meters (support P2). According to this indicator, the support of the bridge even exceeds the height of the Eiffel Tower. Another record - the highest support in the world (without a pylon - the upper part of the support, which is located above the roadway) is 244.96 meters.

In order to ensure the safety of the Millau Viaduct, many devices and sensors were placed on it, which constantly monitor the state of the structure. Particular attention is paid to the P2 support, which, due to its height, is subjected to the largest load among all the bridge supports. Devices that determine mechanical stress in bridge structures, temperature, surface slopes, wind speed and many other parameters constantly transmit data to a single monitoring point. Thus, the safety of the structure is controlled by hundreds of sensors that take readings several times per second. The lack of safety and stability of such high supports was one of the main arguments of opponents of the construction of the bridge. But over the past years, the safety of the constructed viaduct has never been doubted.

EUR 400 million was spent on the construction of this outstanding engineering structure, and it was decided to introduce a fare on Millau Viaduct to offset the costs.