The Tallest Bridge In The World Cost $147 Million

Often bathed in clouds and mist, Beipanjiang Bridge in southern China offers an otherworldly experience as you drive almost 2,000 feet above the water below. The bridge offers breathtaking and somewhat terrifying views of the rocky Beipanjiang Valley and turbulent Beipan River. The construction cost was huge, but the bridge broke records all over the world for its height and innovation, cementing China's status as the country with the highest number of tall bridges. But why does China make its bridges so tall? And will this record-holding bridge soon lose its title to some up-and-coming behemoth? Join us as we explore the incredible creation of the Beipanjiang Bridge. Built above the Beipanjiang Valley in China's Guizhou Province, the Beipanjiang Bridge, also known as the Duge Bridge, sits an impressive 565 meters or 1,854 feet above the Beipan River, which is equivalent to a 200-story skyscraper. For comparison, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is just 220 feet high, while New York's One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the U.S., stands at 1,776 feet tall. Beipanjiang Bridge is a four-lane cable-stayed bridge on the border between the provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan, an area known for being difficult to navigate and travel. The bridge spans 1,341 meters or 4,399 feet across the valley, giving travelers a safe and breathtaking way to travel within the region. But this convenience came with a massive price tag of 1.023 billion yuan, or around 147 million U.S. dollars. When the bridge was completed in 2016, it became the highest in the entire world thanks to the height its deck stood above the officially making it into the Guinness World Records in 2018. But its record-breaking height shouldn't be confused with the other tallest bridge in the world, the Malau Viaduct in France, which cost $424 million. The viaduct is known for its tall structure, but it definitely doesn't have the height under its deck that China's bridge does. It has a structural height of In comparison, the Beipanjiang Bridge's tallest tower is just 269 meters or 883 feet high, making it the 10th tallest bridge tower in the world, but it still broke the record for highest deck compared to the ground below it. Now, if anyone ever asks you what you know about bridges, you have a little tall vs. high bridge trivia to toss their way. In addition to being the highest bridge in the world, the Beipanjiang Bridge also uses the second-longest-ever span-of-steel truss cable. But how did this bridge manage to break so many records and become an iconic symbol of innovative engineering all around the world? To understand that, we'll have to take a look at how it was made. It took three years of construction to finish the bridge by 2016, but discussions and design officially began back in 2011. It all started with an 8.9 million yuan, or 1.37 million U.S. dollar grant in scientific research funding from the Chinese government. Soon after, the project itself provided match funding of around 6.1 million yuan, or about 937,000 U.S. dollars, bringing the research fund to around 15 million yuan, or 2.3 million U.S. dollars. Designed by Chinese engineers, the Beipanjiang Bridge connects Guizhou's east-west routes to the Yunnan province across terrain that was previously inaccessible to most cars and trucks. The engineering and placement of the bridge was an enormous undertaking that took the most careful planning and research. The gorge the bridge crosses is so deep that the structure had to be able to withstand the strong wind field created by the valley below. The engineers decided to go with tough steel truss cable to provide the flexibility and strength needed to keep the bridge standing. Its location definitely played a part in how tall the bridge ended up being. The original design estimated a height that was a couple of hundred feet lower, but the designers had to keep moving the bridge higher and higher to avoid the cracks and caves present in the mountains on either side of the valley. This process of trial and error is what ended up making the bridge so iconically high, though it also increased the budget by an estimated 20 to 40 million dollars. However, running into these problems wound up being completely worth it in the end. We mentioned that the bridge connected areas not even accessible by vehicles, so it's not hard to imagine just how much the bridge's creation changed the travel time and habits of those in the Guizhou province of southern China, which is a land of mountains, high plateaus, rivers, and canyons. The bridge is part of the G65 Hangzhou-Raili Expressway, between Kujing and Liupanshui. The entire four-lane divided highway that the bridge is part of stretches an incredible 2,935 kilometers, or 1,825 miles, from the city of Hangzhou near Shanghai to the border of Burma near Tibet. Upon completion, the bridge decreased travel time from one side to the other from about three hours to just five minutes. It also shortened the overall travel time between Zhenwei City, Yunnan, and Shuiqing County, Guizhou, from around five hours to just an hour. Because of this, the Beipanjiang Bridge is more than just a bridge. It's a structure that brings together communities, allows visitors to explore other regions, and increases the amount of tourists attracted to the area. This in turn increases the economy of some of these smaller communities that took a lot longer to access without the bridge's help. The bridge's creation even improved integration between regions, since people have more freedom to move where they'd like without travel being a complicating factor. And of course, the bridge is also a proud symbol of China's growing financial strength, engineering abilities, and overall position in the world. We briefly mentioned that China has a reputation for building tall bridges, but it's hard to believe just how far ahead they are in this respect than the rest of the world. China has both the second and third highest bridges in the world as well. They are the Saidu River Bridge at 496 meters or 1,627 feet high, and the Puli Bridge at 485 meters or 1,591 feet. The Beipanjiang Bridge is the tallest in China since the Saidu River Bridge, which it beat in both height and cost. The Saidu Bridge cost about 720 million yuan, or 100 million US dollars, showing China's ability to keep one-upping themselves when it comes to progress and financial abilities. Thanks to its rocky terrain filled with valleys and canyons, the province of Guizhou is home to more high bridges than anywhere else in China, and also every other country on Earth combined. More specifically, there is no waterway within Guizhou that has a greater collection of super-high bridges than the Beipan River does. So really, the Beipanjiang Bridge was destined to be the world's highest right from the start. The focus on creating more convenient commuting in China and the Guizhou area started with the High-Speed Railway, a project which cost 1.3 billion dollars and went through the mountains. But now that bridges are being built to cut travel time even more and allow commuters to take their own vehicles, China is cementing itself as the tall bridge capital of the world. By 2020, Guizhou has more than 250 bridges over 100 meters or 328 feet high, the biggest concentration of tall bridges in the world. We can compare that to Italy, which has the world's second-greatest number of high bridges, even though they only have 40 exceeding 100 meters in height. Of the world's 20 super-high bridges that exceed 300 meters or 984 feet from deck to water, all are in China except for three. So it's not likely that the Beipanjiang Bridge will lose its title as the highest bridge anytime soon, and if it did, it would probably lose it to another Chinese creation. With the bridge's construction, China not only made commuting easier and broke some records to make themselves look good, they also created one of the coolest and most breathtaking man-made structures in the world that seems to blend perfectly with its surroundings. And five years after its creation, it's still offering China the convenience and attention that makes the $147 million price tag completely worth it. Beipanjiang Bridge might be the highest bridge in the world, but it's nowhere near the most expensive. That title belongs to Hong Kong's Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, which costs $20 billion. Let us know what other costly construction projects you'd love to know more about. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time!