Viaduct Millau: the highest bridge in the world that was built in just 3 years

The authors of the viaduct project are Michel Virlho and Norman Foster. The bridge has a length of 2 460 meters and 4 lanes for traffic at a width of 32 meters. But the main thing that distinguishes this viaduct from many other similar projects is the height of the supports. The bridge is supported by 7 supports of different heights. The average height of the roadway in relation to the bottom of the river valley is about 270 meters. Six central spans have a length of 342 meters, and two extreme ones - 204 meters. The height of the longest support is almost 245 meters.

The Millau Viaduct is an outstanding engineering structure in two dimensions. He owns a record of the height of the bridge support with the pylon, which is 343 meters (support P2). According to this indicator, the bridge support even exceeds the height of the Eiffel Tower. Another record - the highest support in the world (without a pylon - the top of the support that is located above the roadway) is 244.96 meters.

In order to ensure the safety of the Millau viaduct, it housed many instruments and sensors that constantly monitor the condition of the structure. Particular attention is paid to the support P2, which because of its height is subjected to the greatest load among all bridge supports. Devices that determine the mechanical stress in bridge structures, temperature, surface slopes, wind speed and many other parameters, constantly transmit data to a single monitoring point. Thus, the safety of the structure is controlled by hundreds of sensors, which take measurements several times per second. Insufficient safety and stability of such high supports was one of the main arguments of opponents of bridge construction. But over the past years, the safety of the constructed viaduct has never been doubted.

400 million euros were spent on the construction of this outstanding engineering structure, and to compensate for costs, it was decided to introduce a fee for the Miho viaduct.