Pont Saint-Michel (Toulouse)
Coordinates: 43 ° 35 ′ 33 ″ N , 1 ° 26 ′ 13 ″ E
| Pont Saint-Michel | ||
|---|---|---|
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| use | Road bridge | |
| Crossing of | Garonne | |
| place | Toulouse | |
| construction | Prestressed concrete bridge | |
| overall length | 326 m | |
| width | 26 m | |
| Number of openings | 5 | |
| Longest span | 65.2 m | |
| start of building | 1959 | |
| completion | 1962 | |
| planner | Eugène Freyssinet | |
| location | ||
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The Pont Saint-Michel is a road bridge over the Garonne in Toulouse , France .
description
The bridge stands about 750 m upriver from the Pont Neuf immediately south of the old town and connects the Saint-Michel district with the Allées Paul Feuga in the extension of the Allée Jules Guesde on the right and Saint-Cyprien with the Place du Fer à Cheval on the left bank of the Garonne.
In detail, this 550 m long road or bridge (again from the right to the left bank of the river) consists of an arched bridge clad with bricks typical of Toulouse over the Rue de la Chaussée , a 36 m wide prestressed concrete plate girder bridge over the right, a few meters further regulated by a weir arm of the Garonne, the confluence of the road over the Pont du Halage de Tounis , another such prestressed concrete bridge over the access canal to the lock Saint-Michel , a junction on the island of Île du Ramier with the access road to the lock and the avenue du Grand Ramier , the large bridge that crosses the main arm of the Garonne with five openings and finally another arched bridge over the riverside path.
The 26 m wide bridge was a road bridge with four lanes and 4 m wide sidewalks on both sides until 2013, but was redesigned in 2013 to accommodate a tram; The Garonne tramway was opened in December 2013 . It also runs on its own tracks on the bridge. Vehicle traffic was reduced to just one lane in each direction. The Île du Ramier and Fer à Cheval stops have been set up with their own stop islands on the bridge. As a result, the two lanes for road traffic were narrowed so that the vehicles inevitably have to drive slowly. The bus line leading over the bridge also has two stops, so that a stopping bus completely blocks road traffic. The southern footpath and bike path out of town was reduced to 3 m wide, while the northern walkway and bike path was widened to 6 m.
Technical details
In the specialist literature, only the large bridge over the main arm is regularly described under the title Pont Saint-Michel . It is a 326 m long and 26 m wide prestressed concrete bridge , which was built by the company Louis Segrette according to a design by Eugène Freyssinet . The trapezoidal frame bridge has 5 openings with pillar spacing of 65.2 m. The struts, which are arranged at an angle like a truss , are connected to the pillars, which protrude just above the surface of the water, to form V-shaped supports, which are rigidly connected to the deck girder at a distance of 12 m on both sides of the pillar axes. In the longitudinal direction, the bridge consists of five closely spaced rows of supports, each of which is connected to two beam girders under the bridge plate.
Design context
Constructively, the Pont Saint-Michel goes back to Freyssinet's 5 Marne bridges . In contrast to the Marne, however, the great difference in height between the street level and the river could be used to provide extensive V-shaped supports under the road girder. Freyssinet saw in this a continuous development from the Pont Neuf with its culverts in the gusset, via the Pont des Amidonniers (today Pont des Catalans ) by Paul Séjourné , which took over these culverts in a modified form, and his own arched bridge Pont de Tonneins to the Pont Saint-Michel, which continues the old idea of diffusers with modern technology.
history
The first fixed connection at this point were two suspension bridges built by the Escarraguel brothers between 1842 and 1844 , one with three pylons and four openings over the main arm and one with two openings and one pylon in the right arm of the river. The bridges were destroyed by the catastrophic flood of 1875.
It was not until 1884 that the city approved a design for the construction of a two-lane, 7.5 m wide cast iron arch bridge with five openings over the main arm and one with one opening over the side arm, which opened in 1890.
The bridge was no longer sufficient for the sharp increase in road traffic after the Second World War . Therefore, a new, significantly wider bridge was built based on the 1957 draft by Eugène Freyssinet , in which the arrangement of the piers was adopted. The traffic could not be interrupted. First, part of the new bridge was built right next to the old one, which was then dismantled to make space for the second part of the new bridge. The new Pont Saint-Michel was inaugurated in March 1962, just a short time before Freyssinet died on June 8, 1962.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Pont Saint Michel sur la Garonne à Toulouse. On the website of the Association pour le mémoire et le rayonnement des travaux d'Eugène Freyssinet
- ^ Toulouse tram
- ^ Garonne, la nouvelle ligne de tramway de Toulouse
- ↑ Google maps
- ↑ P. Lebelle: Ouvrages d'art, Ouvrages maritimes. In: L'Ingénieur-Constructeur, Revue technique mensuelle n ° 134, March-April 1969; Special edition on Freyssinet and Prestressed Concrete ( digitalisat PDF; 17.6 MB), p. 19 (22 in PDF), especially p. 24 (28 in PDF)
- ↑ a b c d Bernard Marrey: Les Ponts Modernes; 20 e siècle. Picard éditeur, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-7084-0484-9
- ^ A b Pont Saint-Michel à Toulouse (1844) on Art et Histoire
- ↑ Saint-Michel Bridge (1890). In: Structurae