25 DE ABRIL BRIDGE

Description

Essentials about the 25 de Abril Bridge in brief

Spanning the Tagus River at a lofty height, the Ponte 25 de Abril (25 de Abril Bridge) is an imposing sight and one of Lisbon’s landmarks. Anyone traveling to the Portuguese capital from the south will most likely cross the Tagus on the 25 de Abril Bridge. The 3.2-kilometer-long bridge span with its impressive 2.3-kilometer suspension bridge connects Lisbon’s Alcântara district on the north side with the city of Almada on the south side of the river. Together with the Vasco da Gama Bridge, the 25 de Abril Bridge is the only bridge that directly connects Lisbon with the south or east side of the Tagus River. In addition, the 25 de Abril Bridge is the third longest suspension bridge in the world with combined road and rail traffic, after the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge near Istanbul and the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong.

The history of the 25 de Abril Bridge

The first ideas for a north-south crossing of the Tagus were already being considered in the late 19th century. In the 1930s, a first commission was commissioned to examine the possibilities. However, it took until the 1950s for another commission to be commissioned by the government to draw up or examine appropriate plans, which were to be suitable for both rail and road traffic. In 1958, the commission finally recommended a bridge link from Lisbon’s south bank to the Christ the King statue in Almada. The tender was won by the American steel company US Steel, and construction was led by the American Bridge Company.

Construction work on the 25 de Abril Bridge began in 1962. The steel required for the bridge was imported from the USA. After almost four years of construction, the 25 de Abril Bridge was ceremoniously opened in August 1966 under the name “Salazar Bridge” (after the then Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar). After the fall of the Salazar regime in the wake of the Carnation Revolution in 1974, it was renamed “Ponte 25 de Abril”.

When it was built in the 1960s, it was already planned to add a rail deck with two rail tracks. This was not realized until the end of the 1990s under the roadway slab. At the same time, the roadway deck was widened by two lanes. Incidentally, anyone crossing the bridge in the direction of Lisbon (i.e. from south to north) has to pay a toll.

The architecture of the 25 de Abril Bridge

The main opening of the 25 de Abril Bridge has a span of 1,013 meters, the two side openings of 482 meters each. Together with a connecting opening on the south side with a span of 99 meters and two connecting openings on the north side with 99 meters each, the total length of the steel suspension bridge is 2,276 meters. The foreshore bridge on the north bank of the Tagus has a length of 937 meters. The two main piers of the suspension bridge have a height of 190 meters and are founded 82 meters below sea level. The height of the carriageways above the water is 70 meters.

The similarity of the 25 de Abril Bridge with the Golden Gate Bridge

Last but not least, it should be mentioned that the 25 de Abril Bridge is often compared to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco because of the color of its paint and the truss-like stiffening girders. Although a similarity cannot be denied at first glance, the pylons of the bridge are not braced in the transverse direction by horizontal beams as in the Golden Gate Bridge, but by diagonal, intersecting beams. In addition, most of the dimensions of the 25 de Abril Bridge are smaller. The actual model of the bridge is the San Francisco Bay Bridge, which is also double-decker and was also built by the American Bridge Company.