Crimea bridge progress

The Crimea Bridge that spans the Kerch Strait linking the Crimea Peninsular (which as far as the international community is concerned is still part of Ukraine) with the adjacent section of Russia is one of the most significant construction projects in Russia and is priced at around $3 billion. When completed the bridge will be 12 miles long making it the longest in Russia.

The bridge has been designed to carry four lanes of road traffic and two railway tracks across the Strait. The arch of the railway section, weighing more than 6,000 tonnes, has been installed on its supporting structures in an operation that took 72 hours during which the Strait was closed to shipping.

Leonid Ryzhenkin, Deputy General Director, Infrastructure Projects at Stroygazmontazh LLC, the main contractor said, “Such an operation would be impossible without extensive experience accumulated by bridge-building specialists on other projects. So, our marine operation is the result of long practice and advanced technologies used in domestic and global bridge engineering.”

After favourable weather was confirmed for the coming three days, the arch was loaded onto the floating system that left the Kerch shore on the night of August 27/28. The system designed for the transportation of the arch spans, consists of two pontoons at each end that were joined as catamarans and fitted with massive cross beams to support the weight. The maritime operation involved transporting the bridge span over the 5km to the installation site and involved more than 10 vessels.

On arrival at the site, the bridge span was lifted into place by winches on the support pillars and by hydraulic rams and the whole mounting operation took less than 72 hours. Additional works with the arch installation are scheduled to take a month after which the second matching arch that will carry the road traffic will be installed.

The arch spans are the largest elements of the Crimea Bridge. The length of each span is close to 227 metres and the height of the arch at its highest point is 45 metres which places it at 80 metres above sea level. The passage for shipping will have a 35 metre clearance and the width will be 185 metres. After the arch was in position the vessel, air and navigation signal system was installed on the arch before shipping was allowed to use the channel again.

Both bridge arches were fabricated at a construction site on the Crimea side of the bridge with piers constructed to allow the arches to be moved out over the submerged pontoons. These were then re-floated to allow the weight to be transferred to the pontoons. The bridge is expected to be completed and open to road traffic at the end of next year and rail traffic in 2019.

By Dag Pike