Features

Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge: World Longest Bridge

Incredible facts that make this bridge an awe-inspiring marvel.

Updated on

February 26, 2024

The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, a 164.8-kilometer viaduct on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway is the longest bridge in the world.

The bridge, which opened in June 2011, is a part of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway linking Shanghai with Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province.

Construction of the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge started in 2006, and it took four years, 10,000 workers, and $8.5 billion to complete the project in 2010.

A huge section of the bridge lies in the Yangtze River Delta – an area characterized by canals, jagged terrain, and low-lying rice paddies.

Its average height is 31 meters above the ground.

Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge follows the flow of the Yangtze River, about eight to 80km south of the river. The bridge traverses the northern boundaries of population centers starting in Danyang, Changzhou, Wuxi, Suzhou, and ending in Kunshan.

The facility’s rail transport segment, the Langfang-Qingxian viaduct, covers a distance of 114km – which makes it the fourth-longest bridge in the world.

A 9km section of the bridge spans across Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou. This segment is built on top of 2,000 pillars, steel cables and a massive 450,000 tons of steel structure.

Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge is strong enough to survive hurricanes and magnitude-eight earthquakes as well as direct sways from naval vessels weighing up to 300,000 tons.

On its completion in November 2010, it broke the records of all other bridges, including that of the 38-km Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, which held the Guinness World Record since 1969.

This prompted the creation of other bridge ranking categories such as ‘longest sea bridge’ as well as ‘longest road bridge’.

Today, America’s longest bridge is Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Lousiana. The causeway is made up of two parallel bridges, the longest of which measures 38.63km.

Bang Na Expressway in Thailand is the world’s longest road bridge, spanning 55km.

The six-lane elevated highway, also known as the Bang Pakong Expressway, ranks seventh in the general category of the longest bridges in the world.