Millau Viaduct connecting Paris and Barcelona

[Kurt]

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct]Millau Viaduct - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[Kurt]

Almost as tall as the empire state building. I'm sure there are plenty of people who can't stand to cross it. I don't know if the old winding road is still active but that looks like more fun and surely a bizarre drive now with the new bridge in place above.

 

[Andy A]

This is, indeed, awesome! When I first looked at it, I thought it was an architectual drawing of a proposed viaduct and then I realized it was already built. How come we don't hear about things like this in our news media? Thanks, Kurt, for this most interesting photo.

 

[Bob]

i had trouble crossing the old bridge in charleston sc

 

[Mermaid]

The viaduct was built as an elegant solution to horrendous traffic problems in the summertime. Mountain roads in France are very twisty and narrow for the most part. The French know the roads so they drive fast but the hordes of tourists arriving from the UK, Belgium, and Germany don't, and the valley would get really jammed up in the high season. All the car exhaust would settle in the valley and it was getting really polluted. The viaduct solves that problem. It's been open five years now and it's become a tourist attraction in its own right, much as the Eiffel Tower is in Paris.

 

[Kurt]

This is, indeed, awesome! When I first looked at it, I thought it was an architectual drawing of a proposed viaduct and then I realized it was already built. How come we don't hear about things like this in our news media? Thanks, Kurt, for this most interesting photo.

Thank goodness for Discovery, Science, National Geographic, HDnet, and similar networks. I saw an hour-long show on it a while back and was enthralled. Some of the construction and engineering projects going on around the world right now are out of this world.