Tram running on the Dom Luís I Bridge, Porto, Portugal,
Wikipedia: The Dom Luís I Bridge (Portuguese: Ponte de Dom Luís I), or Luís I Bridge, is a double-deck metal arch bridge that spans the River Douro between the cities of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia in Portugal. At its construction, its 172 metres (564 ft) span was the longest of its type in the world. It has been confused with the nearby Maria Pia Bridge, a railway bridge that was built 9 years earlier (and is located 1 kilometre ( mi) to the east), which is similar in aspect to the Luís I bridge. In 1879, Gustave Eiffel presented a project to construct a new bridge over the Douro, with a high single deck in order to facilitate ship project was rejected due to dramatic growth of the urban population, which required a re-thinking of the limits of a single-deck platform. A competition was initiated in November 1880, in order to construct a double-deck metal bridge, which included projects by Compagnie de Fives-Lille, Cail & C., Schneider & Co., Gustave Eiffel, Lecoq & Co., Société de Braine-le-Comte, Société des Batignolles (which submitted two ideas), Andrew Handyside & Co., Société de Construction de Willebroek (also two projects) and John Dixon. It was in January of the following year that deliberations by the committee supported the project of Société de Willebroek, a design that cost 369 000$000[clarification needed] réis and provided better carrying capacity. On 21 November 1881, the public work was awarded to the Belgian Société de Willebreok, from Brussels, for 402 contos. It was to be administrated by Théophile Seyrig, a disciple of Gustave Eiffel and author of the project. Seyrig had worked on the D. Maria bridge with Eiffel, hence the resemblance of his new bridge to the D. Maria bridge. Construction began on the Ponte Luís I alongside the towers of an earlier railway suspension bridge, the Ponte Pênsil, which was disassembled. By 26 May 1886, the first weight experiments began, with the transport of a 2,000 kilogram
Size: 6000px × 4000px
Location: Porto, Portugal
Photo credit: © Bert de Ruiter / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: arch, arched, architecture, bert, bridge, de, dom, double-deck, douro, horizontal, iron, landscape, light, luis, metal, metro, modern, oporto, porto, portugal, public, rail, river, ruiter, subway, technology, train, tram, tramway, transport, travel, viaporto, yellow
