Akashi Bridge

I am a little disappointed here as I had hoped to make a more comprehensive visit and report on Tuesday. As I said Satyaki and I visited the bridge on Sunday but the tour that takes you to the top of one of the towers is closed on Sundays, so I returned on Tuesday to complete the mission. It was a cloudy hazy day early and again the tower was closed, and my ability to understand the people at the desk kept me from completely understanding why.
Oh well.

The bridge is a very impressive structure and is one of the largest suspension bridges in existence. The towers are nearly 300 meters tall (nearly 1000 ft) and nearly 4km long (about 2.5 miles). It was built after a couple of ferries sank and 150 lives were lost, mostly schoolchildren I believe.
If you click on the bridge data picture it will expand and you can read the detail.

The toll to cross is about $50 (covers out and back).
The bridge had to be designed for an earthquake prone zone and was under construction when the 1995 Kobe earthquake occurred. They ultimately discovered that the towers had shifted during the quake and they had to start over with at least one of the structures.
The suspension cables are 1.1 meters thick (maybe 45 inches) and consist of multiple hexagonal strands that are designed to be fairly rigid in one direction and flexible in the other.

 

Cable cross section

You can feel the bridge move with traffic and this would be important in an earthquake. Equally the bridge has to be designed to sustain and survive high winds. So It is a complex structure that was expensive to build but manages the task while also being a beautiful (in my mind anyway) piece of architecture.

 

Osaka Bay from the bridge base

Looking down thru a glass floor to the water 100 meters below