Howrah Bridge
| Howrah bridge রবীন্দ্র সেতু Howrah Bridge হাওড়া ব্রিজ |
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The Howrah Bridge
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| Coordinates | 22°35′06″N 88°20′49″E / 22.5851°N 88.3469°ECoordinates: 22°35′06″N 88°20′49″E / 22.5851°N 88.3469°E |
| Carries | 4 lanes of Strand Road, pedestrians and bicycles |
| Crosses | Hooghly River |
| Locale | Howrah and Kolkata |
| Official name | Rabindra Setu |
| Maintained by | Kolkata Port Trust |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | Suspension type Balanced Cantilever 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 | Rendel, Palmer and Tritton |
| Constructed by | The Braithwaite Burn and Jessop Construction Company Limited |
| Construction begin | 1936 |
| Construction end | 1942 |
| Opened | 3 Feb 1943 |
| Statistics | |
| Daily traffic | 100,000 vehicles and 150,000 pedestrians |
| Toll | Free both ways |
 Howrah bridge
রবীন্দ্র সেতু Howrah Bridge হাওড়া ব্রিজ Location in West Bengal
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Howrah Bridge is a Propped Cantilever bridge with a suspended span 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 two cities of Howrah and Kolkata (Calcutta). On 14 June 1965 it was renamed Rabindra Setu after the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was the first Indian and Asian Nobel laureate. It is still popularly known as the Howrah Bridge.
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 newly built Nivedita Setu. It weathers the storms of the Bay of Bengal region, carrying 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.
In 1862, the Government of Bengal asked George Turnbull, Chief Engineer of the East India Railway Company to study the feasibility of bridging the Hooghly River — he had recently established the company's rail terminus in Howrah. He reported on 29 March with large-scale drawings and estimates that:
The bridge was not built.
In view of the increasing traffic across the Hooghly river, a committee was appointed in 1855-56 to review alternatives for constructing a bridge across it. The plan was shelved in 1859-60, to be revived in 1868, when it was decided that a bridge should be constructed and a newly appointed trust vested to manage it. The Calcutta Port Trust was founded in 1870, and the Legislative department of the then Government of Bengal passed the Howrah Bridge Act in the year 1871 under the Bengal Act IX of 1871, empowering the Lieutenant-Governor to have the bridge constructed with Government capital under the aegis of the Port Commissioners.
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Wikipedia