The Vasco de Gama Bridge celebrates its 25th birthday!
Since its inauguration, the Vasco de Gama Bridge has facilitated the smooth passage of over 543.7 million vehicles across the Tagus River, relieving congestion off the April 25 Bridge. This engineering marvel has not only improved transportation but also spurred development on the south bank of the river.
Last year, our teams in Spain have been called out for a structural inspection on the iconic Vasco de Gama bridge, located north of Lisbon, that suffered from an impressive fire due to a truck accident. The durability of four cables was strongly impacted but no significant loss of mechanical capacity was observed. It was then decided to reallocate and maintain the six traffic lanes and start replacing the stay cables.
The bridge’s stay cable system was well known actually to our teams as Freyssinet installed it 25 years ago! Between 1996 and 1998, our teams also supplied the supports for the Sacavem interchange and the 292 Tetron® bearings on the entire South Viaduct, combined with 44 Dynatron® seismic force transmitters.
It has already gone down in civil engineering history as one of the most important and successful projects of the 20th century. The international recognition of this work was validated by the award of the first prize from the prestigious Ibero-American Institution of Architecture and Civil Engineering in 2000.
