Howrah Bridge

The technology used in the construction of Howrah Bridge is the suspension span and is a cantilever Bridge that has been constructed on River Hooghly in the state of West Bengal. Before the Howrah Bridge came into existence there was an already existing bridge named Pontoon Bridge that was replaced to cover the distance for connecting Howrah and Kolkata. The current Howrah Bridge was initially named as New Howrah Bridge and was started in the year 1943. In the year 1965 on 14th June, this bridge was renamed as Rabindra Setu. The Bridge was given this name after Rabindranath Tagore, the famous Bengali poet who also was the first Asian and Indian to be considered as Nobel literate. But this Bridge is commonly known as Howrah Bridge.

Description of the Bridge

This Bridge is the symbol for the city of Kolkata. This Bridge has to mar the storms of Bay of Bengal and has the capability of allowing almost 100000 vehicles through it and also 150000 pedestrians cross this bridge. This has been recognized as the world’s busiest cantilever bridge. This Bridge is the world’s sixth longest bridge.

The construction of this bridge did not involve the use of nuts and bolts rather it used riveting method for its structure. A total of 26500 tons of steel has been used in the construction of this bridge that included Tiscrom, a heavy tensile steel of almost 23000 tons that Tata steel supplied during the construction.  Braithwaite, Burn & Jessop Construction Company completed the fabrication work.

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