Assam’s long-awaited Bogibeel bridge is finally open for public. The 4.9 km-long bridge on the Brahmaputra river was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Dec. 25, Tuesday.
Bogibeel Bridge is being deemed as a game changer for the North East Indian states. Here are some interesting facts about Bogibeel Bridge:
- The bridge is constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 5,900 crore by Hindustan Construction Company (HCC).
- From the sanction of the project in 1997 to its recent inauguration, it took India 21 years to build this road-rail bridge.
- The bridge has a two-line railway track on the lower deck and a three-lane road on the top deck.
- The Bogibeel Bridge will help defense forces and their equipment move quickly, In fact, it is also reported that the bridge has been built in a way that “even a fighter jet can land on it in case of emergency.”
- Train trips from Assam to Arunachal Pradesh got quicker by ten hours while Dibrugarh-Itanagar road trip is now 150 km shorter.
- Designed like a bridge that links Sweden and Denmark, Bogibeel Bridge is India’s only fully welded bridge for which European codes and welding standards were adhered to for the first time in the country, Money Control reported.
- ‘Most 2D’ automatic nesting software was used to generate efficient two-dimensional cutting plans for fabricating the steel superstructure for the bridge.
- Eighty-thousand tonnes of steel plates were delivered for this project.
- The bridge has a serviceable period of around 120 years.
- The bridge also happens to be Asia’s second-longest rail-and-road connector.