Tsing Ma Bridge
| Tsing Ma Bridge | |
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Tsing Ma Bridge
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| Coordinates | 22°21′05″N 114°04′27″E / 22.35139°N 114.07417°E |
| Carries | 6 lanes of roadway (upper) 2 MTR rail tracks, 2 lanes of roadway (lower) |
| Crosses | Ma Wan Channel |
| Locale | Ma Wan Island and Tsing Yi Island |
| Official name | Tsing Ma Bridge |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | Double-decked suspension bridge |
| Width | 41 metres (135 ft) |
| Longest span | 1,377 metres (4,518 ft) |
| Clearance below | 62 metres (203 ft) |
| History | |
| Opened | 22 May 1997 |
| Statistics | |
| Daily traffic | trains and cars |
| Toll | HK$30 (cars, combined with Kap Shui Mun Bridge) |
| Tsing Ma Bridge | |||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 青馬大橋 | ||||||||||||
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| Literal meaning | Tsing Yi-Ma Wan Great Bridge | ||||||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Hakka | |
| Romanization | ciang1 ma1 tai4 kiau2 |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Yale Romanization | ching1 ma5 daai6 kiu4 |
| Jyutping | cing1 maa5 daai6 kiu4 |
Tsing Ma Bridge is a bridge in Hong Kong. It is the world's 11-longest span suspension bridge, and was the second longest at time of completion. The bridge was named after two of the islands at its ends, namely Tsing Yi and Ma Wan. It has two decks and carries both road and rail traffic, which also makes it the largest suspension bridge of this type. The bridge has a main span of 1,377 metres (4,518 ft) and a height of 206 metres (676 ft). The span is the longest of all bridges in the world carrying rail traffic.
The 41-metre (135 ft) wide bridge deck carries six lanes of automobile traffic, with three lanes in each direction. The lower level contains two rail tracks and two sheltered carriageways used for maintenance access and traffic lanes when particularly severe typhoons strike Hong Kong and the bridge deck is closed to traffic.
Numerous consortia bid on the contract to construct the bridge. Hyundai made the lowest bid but were disqualified for non-compliance with the financial requirements. A Japanese bid was ruled out for being too expensive. An Anglo-Japanese joint venture, comprising Costain, Mitsui, and Trafalgar House, won the job. Construction work on the bridge began in June 1992.Gammon Construction constructed the caissons for the bridge towers. The framework for each caisson was floated into place and sunk, and then filled with concrete underwater. The two caissons on the Ma Wan side weigh 4,500 tons each, while those on the Tsing Yi side (closer to shore) each weigh about 3,000 tons. Land reclamation was carried out on both sides of the bridge. The more substantial reclamation on Ma Wan was used as a work platform for construction crews.
The first steel deck segment was lifted into place in late 1994. The approach deck segments were constructed in Britain and Dubai and then shipped to Hong Kong for assembling. The main span segments were built by Cleveland in the U.K. and by Mitsui in Japan. The climbing cranes used to erect the tower portals were coincidentally also used on the HSBC Main Building a decade earlier, as well as at Canary Wharf in the meantime.
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