Howrah Bridge

Howrah Bridge

Howrah Bridge is a bridge with a suspended span over the Hooghly River in West Bengal, India. Commissioned in 1943,the bridge was originally named the New Howrah Bridge, because it replaced a pontoon bridge at the same location linking the two cities of Howrah and Kolkata (Calcutta). On 14 June 1965 it was renamed Rabindra Setu after the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was the first Indian and Asian Nobel laureate. It is still popularly known as the Howrah Bridge.

The bridge is one of four on the Hooghly River and is a famous symbol of Kolkata and West Bengal. The other bridges are the Vidyasagar Setu (popularly called the Second Hooghly Bridge), the Vivekananda Setu, and the newly built Nivedita Setu. It weathers the storms of the Bay of Bengal region, carrying a daily traffic of approximately 100,000 vehicles and possibly more than 150,000 pedestrians, easily making it the busiest cantilever bridge in the world. The third-longest cantilever bridge at the time of its construction, the Howrah Bridge is currently the sixth-longest bridge of its type in the world.

Howrah Bridge
The Howrah Bridge
Coordinates	22.5851°N 88.3469°E
Carries	4 lanes[1] of Strand Road,[2]pedestrians and bicycles
Crosses	Hooghly River
Locale	Howrah and Kolkata
Official name	Rabindra Setu
Maintained by	Kolkata Port Trust[3]
Characteristics
Design	Suspension type Balanced Cantilever[4]and truss arch[5]
Material	Steel
Total length	705 m (2,313.0 ft)[6][7]
Width	71 ft (21.6 m) with two footpaths of 15 ft (4.6 m) on either side[4]
Height	82 m (269.0 ft)[5]
Longest span	1,500 ft (457.2 m)[4][5]
Clearance above	5.8 m (19.0 ft)[4]
Clearance below	8.8 m (28.9 ft)[4]
History
Designer	Rendel, Palmer and Tritton[8]
Constructed by	Braithwaite, Burn & Jessop Construction
Construction start	1936[8]
Construction end	1942[8]
Opened	3 Feb 1943; 75 years ago[7]
Statistics
Daily traffic	100,000 vehicles and 150,000 pedestrians[9]
Toll	Free both ways
Howrah Bridge Location in West Bengal

A suspended bridge: If you didn’t notice in all the photos of Howrah Bridge, then take a look now and observe how the metal structure hangs above the river with no pillars in between supporting it. It’s a suspended-type balanced cantilever bridge, the third longest when it was constructed and now, it’s the sixth longest bridge of its type in the world.