130 Danube bridges in eight countries
danube.news
The Danube has always been both a border and a uniting element, which is reflected among other things in the construction of bridges across the river. On the upper Danube, the river is crossed by a bridge every seven kilometres on average. On the middle reach of the Danube, the average distance between bridges is 27 kilometres, while on the lower Danube the distance is 155 kilometres.
Section | Length of section | Number of bridges | Bridge density(length / bridges) |
|---|---|---|---|
Upper Danube (Kelheim–Gönyű) | 624 km | 88 | 7.1 km |
Middle Danube(Gönyű–Turnu-Severin) | 860 km | 32 | 26.9 km |
Lower Danube(Turnu-Severin–Sulina) | 931 km | 6 | 155.2 km |
Danube Waterway(Kelheim–Sulina) | 2,415 km | 126 | 19.2 km |
On the lower Danube, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova do not have any bridges across the Danube, while the nearly 472-kilometre-long border section between Bulgaria and Romania currently features only one bridge, which crosses the river at river-km 488.70 between Rousse and Giurgiu. With a length of 2,224 metres, it is one of the longest bridges spanning the Danube. Another Danube bridge from Bulgaria to Romania is currently being built at river-km 796.10 between Vidin and Calafat and will be completed by 2011.
Only a few of the bridges across the Danube are cross-border bridges: of the 126 bridges spanning the Danube waterway only 10 provide a link between two Danube countries. There are four bridges between Slovakia and Hungary, four bridges between Croatia and Serbia and one between Serbia and Romania and between Bulgaria and Romania respectively.
Among the four capitals of the ten riparian countries which are directly located on the river, Budapest with its 11 Danube bridges has the highest number of bridges across the river, closely followed by Vienna with 10 bridges. Bratislava has five and Belgrade one Danube bridge.
The updated and expanded List of Danube Bridges, which has been recently published by via donau, contains a table with navigation-relevant parameters of 126 existing and four currently constructed bridges spanning the Danube along the section from Kelheim to Sulina. These parameters include location (river-km), vertical clearance at highest navigable water level (HNWL), horizontal clearance at low navigable water level (LNWL), reference gauges, number of passageways and allowed direction of passage.
The concise overview is intended both as a service for skippers and as basic data for shippers and forwarders assisting the planning of inland waterway transport operations. For this reason, it is available for download from the » DoRIS website and via donau’s » information portal on Danube navigation.
Source: via donau
Picture caption:Model of the bridge between Vidin and Calafat currently under construction on the Romanian-Bulgarian border section of the lower Danube
Picture source: FCC Construcción; project website » www.danubebridge2.com
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