Howrah Bridge
The Howrah Bridge is a balanced steel bridge over the Hooghly River in West Bengal, India. Commissioned in 1943, the bridge was originally named the New Howrah Bridge, because it replaced a pontoon bridge at the same location linking the cities of Howrah and Kolkata, which are located at the opposite banks of each other. On 14 June 1965, it was renamed Rabindra Setu after the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was the first Indian and Asian Nobel laureate. It is still popularly known as the Howrah Bridge.
Howrah Bridge | |
|---|---|
Night view of the Howrah Bridge | |
| Coordinates | 22.5851°N 88.3469°E |
| Carries | 4 lanes of Strand Road, pedestrians and bicycles |
| Crosses | Hooghly River (Ganga River) |
| Locale | Howrah and Kolkata |
| Official name | Howrah Bridge |
| Other name(s) | Gateway of Kolkata Grand Old Lady of Calcutta |
| Maintained by | Kolkata Port Trust |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | Suspension type Steel bridge and truss arch |
| Material | Steel |
| Total length | 705 m (2,313.0 ft) |
| Width | 71 ft (21.6 m) with two footpaths of 15 ft (4.6 m) on either side |
| Height | 82 m (269.0 ft) |
| Longest span | 1,500 ft (457.2 m) |
| Clearance above | 5.8 m (19.0 ft) |
| Clearance below | 8.8 m (28.9 ft) |
| History | |
| Designer | M/s. Rendel, Palmer and Tritton |
| Constructed by | Braithwaite, Burn & Jessop Construction Company |
| Construction start | 1936 |
| Construction end | 1942 |
| Opened | 3 February 1943 |
| Statistics | |
| Daily traffic | 100,000 vehicles and 150,000 pedestrians |
| Toll | Toll-Free on both ways |
| Location | |
The bridge is one of four on the Hooghly River and is a famous symbol of Kolkata and West Bengal. The other bridges are the Vidyasagar Setu (popularly called the Second Hooghly Bridge), the Vivekananda Setu and the relatively new Nivedita Setu. It carries a daily traffic of approximately 100,000 vehicles and possibly more than 150,000 pedestrians, easily making it the busiest cantilever bridge in the world. The third-longest cantilever bridge at the time of its construction, the Howrah Bridge is currently the sixth-longest bridge of its type in the world.