Howrah Bridge
Howrah Bridge | |
|---|---|
Night view of the Howrah Bridge | |
| Coordinates | 22°35′06″N 88°20′49″E / 22.5851°N 88.3469°E |
| Carries | Strand Road, Kolkata, Roadway with pedestrians and bicycles |
| Crosses | Hooghly River |
| Locale | Howrah, Kolkata metropolitan region, India |
| Official name | Rabindra Setu |
| Named for | Rabindranath Tagore |
| Maintained by | Kolkata Port Trust |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | Suspension type balanced cantilever and truss arch |
| Material | Steel |
| Total length | 705 m (2,313.0 ft) |
| Width | 21.6 m (70.9 ft) with two footpaths of 4.6 m (15.1 ft) on either side |
| Height | 82 m (269.0 ft) |
| Longest span | 457.2 m (1,500.0 ft) |
| Clearance above | 5.8 m (19.0 ft) |
| Clearance below | 8.8 m (28.9 ft) |
| No. of lanes | 6 |
| History | |
| Designer | M/s. Rendel, Palmer and Tritton |
| Constructed by | The Braithwaite Burn & Jessop Construction Company Limited |
| Construction start | 1936 |
| Construction end | 1942 |
| Opened | 3 February 1943 |
| Statistics | |
| Daily traffic | Approx. 100,000 vehicles with more than 150,000 pedestrians |
| Toll | No |
| Location | |
The Howrah Bridge is a balanced steel bridge over the Hooghly River in West Bengal, India. Commissioned in 1943, the bridge was originally named the New Howrah Bridge, because it replaced a pontoon bridge at the same location linking the both sides of cities of Kolkata (Calcutta). Burrabazar is connected with Howrah rail terminal because of this bridge. On 14 June 1965, it was renamed Rabindra Setu after the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was the first Indian and Asian Nobel laureate. It is still popularly known as the Howrah Bridge.
The bridge is one of four on the Hooghly River and is a famous symbol of Kolkata and West Bengal. The other bridges are the Vidyasagar Setu (popularly called the Second Hooghly Bridge), the Vivekananda Setu and the relatively new Nivedita Setu. It carries a daily traffic of approximately 100,000 vehicles and possibly more than 150,000 pedestrians, easily making it the busiest cantilever bridge in the world. The third-longest cantilever bridge at the time of its construction, the Howrah Bridge is currently the sixth-longest bridge of its type in the world.