The longest bridge in the world took only four years to be built, despite being constructed on difficult terrain.
Being 102.4 miles long, the Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge was awarded the title of the longest bridge in the world by the Guinness World Record in June 2011, the same month it was officially launched.
This outstanding bridge, built between 2006 and 2010, is located in Jiangsu province in eastern China and links Shanghai to Nanjing.
It crosses lowland rice paddies, canals as well as part of the Yangtze River Delta and has a 5.6-mile-long section traversing the open waters of the Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou.
The part of the bridge crossing the lake is supported by a whopping 2,000 pillars and steel cables.
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For the majority of its total length, this bridge follows the Yangtze River, at a distance varying between five and 50 miles.
The construction of the Danyang–Kunshan viaduct involved some 10,000 workers and cost around £6.9billion – or £41.5million per mile.
The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge averages about 100 feet off the ground, and was built to be able to resist natural phenomena such as strong typhoons and earthquakes up to magnitude eight.
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Designed and built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation – a government-funded company – this bridge is part of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway.
This infrastructure was developed to alleviate local rail traffic in the Chinese province which counts some 80.4 million residents, but the bridge also has two lanes for cars.
While the Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge is particularly impressive, China is home also to the fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth-longest bridges in the world.
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The second-longest bridge in the world, however, is the Changhua–Kaohsiung Viaduct in Taiwan, which measures more than 97.7 miles.
Japan built the Kita–Yaita Viaduct, the third-longest bridge in the world measuring 71.1 miles.
The longest bridge in the UK is the Bromford Viaduct which, located in Birmingham, measures around 3.5 miles.
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