The Second Orinoco crossing or Orinoquia Bridge is a combined road and railway bridge over the

Orinoco River The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers , with 76.3 percent of it in Venezuela and the remainder in Colombia. It is the fourth largest river in the wor ...

near

Ciudad Guayana Ciudad Guayana () (in English Guayana City) is a city in Bolívar State, Venezuela. It stretches 40 kilometers along the south bank of the Orinoco river, at the point where it is joined by its main tributary, the Caroní river. The Caroni cros ...

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

. It was inaugurated on November 13, 2006 and named ''Orinoquia'' Bridge. Prior to its construction, the only crossing of the Orinoco was the

Angostura Bridge Angostura Bridge is a suspension bridge that spans the Orinoco River at Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela. The Spanish word Angostura means "narrows". Built in 1967 at a cost of US$35million, the bridge has a total length of 1,678.50 meters, a distance ...

around 100 km farther upstream at

Ciudad Bolívar Ciudad Bolívar (; Spanish for "Bolivar City"), formerly known as Angostura and St. Thomas de Guyana, is the capital of Venezuela's southeastern Bolívar State. It lies at the spot where the Orinoco River narrows to about in width, is the si ...

that was opened in 1967. At the site chosen for the bridge the Orinoco is three kilometres wide with two navigation channels separated by a small island that is revealed during the low water season. The average discharge of the river here varies between 66 000 m³/s and 85 000 m³/s, flowing at up to 2.6 m/s and with a seasonal variation in level of 12.5 m. The crossing is composed of approximately 4.5 km of structures and carries four lanes of road traffic separated into two carriageways by a single railway track in the centre. It consists of two cable stayed navigation spans each of 300 m with a south approach 1320 m long composed of 22 60 m spans and a north approach of 636 m composed of ten 60 m spans and one of 36 m. The two navigation spans have a clearance of 41 m above water level and are supported by four 120 m tall H-shaped pylons via two planes of cable stays. Unusually, these spans do not lead directly into each other as at other multi-span cable stayed bridges such as the

Millau Viaduct The Millau Viaduct (french: Viaduc de Millau, ) is a multispan cable-stayed bridge completed in 2004 across the gorge valley of the Tarn near (west of) Millau in the Aveyron department in the Occitanie Region, in Southern France. The design t ...

, but are anchored at a fixed point on the mid-stream island. The bridge was built to complement the existing Angostura Bridge and to provide a more direct connection with the important industrial city of Ciudad Guayana. In particular, it was intended to provide for a future rail connection to allow the city's heavy industrial products to be transported to the ports of Venezuela's

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...

coast. River transport on the Orinoco includes oceangoing ships, but because of its high sediment load the Orinoco has to be constantly dredged. In addition the crossing strengthens transport links between Venezuela and Brazil to the South which is important for Brazilian exports. This is one reason why President Lula da Silva of Brazil attended the inauguration together with Venezuela's

Hugo Chávez Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republ ...

. Near the bridge, there is Orinoco powerline crossing, whose pylons are the tallest man-made structures in South America today.

External links

Dorman Long Technology: Orinoco River Second Crossing, Venezuela

Bridge design and engineering news: over the Orinoco

Corporación Venezolana de Guayana
(Spanish) {{DEFAULTSORT:Orinoquia Bridge Bridges completed in 2006 Cable-stayed bridges in Venezuela Buildings and structures in Bolívar (state) Buildings and structures in Ciudad Guayana

See also

External links