The Chirajara bridge will have a new design: ANI

The National Infrastructure Agency of Colombia (ANI) reported, this Thursday, November 19, that the Chirajara bridge, which is located on the road that connects Bogotá with the eastern Llanos, will have a new design with which it is intended to replace the bridge that collapsed in January 2018 and left nine workers dead.

According to the ANI, the design of the new bridge requires the construction of a new foundation that will adapt to the type of successive cantilevers and will have a length of 460 meters which will have the support of the Colombian Society of Engineers in the study and design stages.

In turn, the entity indicated that the new structure, which should be executed in two and a half years, aims to solve the “technical controversies” arising from the construction of the cable-stayed bridge that was designed between the end of 2018 and July 2019.

“The typology of successive cantilever bridges refers to a construction procedure frequently used in the country for large bridges. The methodology consists of building the superstructure (deck) from the piers, adding partial sections that are supported by the previous section, being carried out symmetrically to balance the loads of the structure “, explained the executive vice president of ANI, Carlos García.

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For her part, the Minister of Transportation, Ángela María Orozco, pointed out that the National Government is advancing in the purpose of connecting the regions in the country, for that reason an infrastructure was proposed that complies with current technical specifications and guarantees connectivity between the departments from Cundinamarca and Meta.

ANI assured that this bridge that connects Bogotá with Villavicencio has the benefit of not have a higher cost than previously agreed in 2010 with the application of the “current bridge design standard”.

Governor of the department

After the French firm Eiffage withdrew from the Chirajara bridge construction project and its designs were misguided, the Government of Meta called on the ANI so that in the shortest possible time the new infrastructure to communicate to the departments is built.

“We need the ANI and the concessionaire to reach an agreement very quickly, given that this is a work that will last more than 3 years and the Llano is urgently demanding that the road be completed “, said the Governor of Meta, Juan Guillermo Zuluaga, on October 2, in reports collected by RCN Radio.

These requests had been made by the Department of Governance since the beginning of the year when Governor Zuluaga indicated “we don’t want a work of art, we want to communicate. That is our request to the contractor and the National Infrastructure Agency so that the construction of the Chirajara bridge is expedited and does not continue to affect our region.

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