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Displaying items by tag: Kennedy Bridge

Spanning the Barrow (downriver of the Port of New Ross) is the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge which has won a prestigious international award for engineering excellence and design of the bridge that opened last year. 

As The Irish Times writes, The International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering said the bridge is “a landmark structure” that has pushed the boundaries for the span of a “concrete extrados bridge”. The association is a scientific and technical group with members in 100 countries, was founded in 1929 and has its seat in Zurich, Switzerland.

The bridge was awarded the Outstanding Structure award in the Bridge or Other Infrastructures category.

It was built as part of the N25 New Ross bypass project and is one of most remarkable bridges in Ireland, rising from the east and turning north, before making landfall on the west of the Barrow.

Most bridges are built along straight lines. But this one contains the longest post-tensioned all-concrete spans in the world. While there are longer spans in bridges, they all take advantage of a lighter steel composite section in the central part of the main span.

Further reading here from the newspaper on the bridge which permits ships to navigate underneath to Ireland's most inland port. 

Published in Inland Waterways