Jiaoziping Bridge

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Jiaoziping Bridge
椒子坪大桥
Wushan, Chongqing, China
500 feet high / 152 meters high
394 foot span / 120 meter span
2013

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One of the most spectacular bridges on a highway filled with many great beam crossings, the Jiaoziping Bridge crosses a deep cut high up on the slope of the Xigou River canyon. Located just 8 kilometers east of the giant Daninghe River Bridge on the G42 expressway, Jiaoziping has a span configuration of 5 × 20 + (65 +120 +65) meters. The piers are 93 and 82 meters tall.

Jiaoziping Bridge is one of two nearly equal sized beam bridges along the Xigou River canyon just a kilometer apart on the spectacular G42 expressway near Wushan City in the 3 Gorges region of the Yangtze River. The other beam span is the Yangjiawu #2 Bridge.

What makes the Jiaoziping and Yangjiawu Bridges unnerving is the precariously steep slopes that would seem to be impossible to build on. Yet there they are - piers as tall as 93 meters, planted into the side of a mountain. The western slopes are especially steep with nearly 15 meters of the foundation piles exposed below the bottom of the piers.

The two bridges may cross very similar canyons but the pier engineering is different with Jiaoziping having a closed box for the lower half with the upper 40 meters consisting of an open box composed of two parallel walls that are each 1.5 meters thick. For the Yangjiawu #2 Bridge the piers are open all the way up the pier but the two walls are approximately double the thickness of Jiaoziping.

The stretch of the G42 expressway west of Wushan in Chongqing Province was completed in 2009 while the eastern stretch of the G42 in Hubei Province opened in 2013. Both Jiaoziping and Yangjiawu #2 Bridges were completed in early 2012 but did not open to traffic until 2013.


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A banner touts the 93 meter height of the piers. Another 15 meters of round piles can be seen below.


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Jiaoziping Bridge satellite image.


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Jiaoziping Bridge location map.