This Day, That Year – April 5

This day in history we feature the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge. The longest bridge span in the world opens to traffic on this day in 1998.

Trivia – Akashi Kaikyo Bridge

The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge is a suspension bridge which links the city of Kobe on the Japanese island of Honshu to Iwaya on Awaji Island. It is part of the Kobe-Awaji-Naruto Expressway, and crosses the busy and turbulent Akashi Strait. It was completed in 1998, and at the time, was the longest central span of any suspension bridge in the world, at 1,991 metres. Currently, it is only the second-longest, behind the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge that was opened in March 2022. It is one of the key links of the Honshū–Shikoku Bridge Project, which created three routes across the Inland Sea.

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Investigations for a bridge across the strait were first conducted by the Kobe municipal government in 1957, followed by an evaluation by the national Ministry of Construction in 1959. In 1961, the Ministry of Construction and Japan National Railways jointly commissioned the Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE) to conduct a technical study, and the JSCE established a committee to investigate five potential routes between Honshu and Shikoku. In 1967, the committee compiled the results of the technical study, concluding that a bridge across the Akashi Strait would face “extremely severe design and construction conditions, which have no similar examples in the world’s long-span bridges” and recommending additional study. In response to the report, the Honshu–Shikoku Bridge Authority was established in 1970, which conducted extensive investigations, including sea trials to establish the construction method of a submarine foundation. In 1973, a bridge with a central span of 1,780 meters on the route was approved, but construction was halted due to poor economic conditions. The original plan called for a mixed railway-road bridge, but when construction on the bridge began in April 1988, the construction was restricted to road only, with six lanes. Actual construction did not begin until May 1988 and involved more than 100 contractors. The Great Hanshin Earthquake in January 1995 did not do substantial damage to the bridge due to anti-seismic building methods. Construction was finished on time in September 1996. The bridge was opened for traffic on April 5, 1998, in a ceremony officiated by the then-Crown Prince Naruhito and his spouse Crown Princess Masako of Japan along with Construction Minister Tsutomu Kawara.

Source – Wikipedia