History
The bridge was envisioned to ease congestion between the quickly developing areas in southern Puxi, as well as to help cope with the traffic expected for Expo 2010. The Expo 2010 site was just to the east of the Lupu Bridge on the Puxi side, and on both sides of the bridge on the Pudong side.
Construction began in October 2000 using a cantilever method and temporary cable-stays. Over 35,000 tonnes of steel were used in construction. The bridge's arch was joined on October 7, 2002.
When the bridge was completed, it became the world's longest arch bridge, surpassing the earlier title holder, the New River Gorge Bridge.
An inauguration ceremony was held on June 27, 2003, featuring a group of runners, including Yao Ming, who were the first to cross the bridge. The bridge opened to vehicular traffic the next day.
In 2009, Lupu Bridge lost its title of the world's longest arch bridge to the Chaotianmen Bridge in Chongqing. The longest span of the Chaotianmen Bridge was only 2 metres (7 ft) longer, at 552 metres (1,811 ft).
The Lupu Bridge was one of the architectural centerpieces of Expo 2010 in Shanghai, as it formed part of the western boundary of the Expo site.
Read more about this topic: Lupu Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)