Ponte Internacional Valença-Tui
Coordinates: 42 ° 2 ′ 11 " N , 8 ° 38 ′ 49" W.
| Ponte Internacional Valença-Tui Puente Internacional Valença-Tuy |
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| Convicted | N-13 (Portugal) / N-551 (Spain); Ramal Internacional | |
| Crossing of | Rio Minho (Portuguese ) / Rio Miño (Spanish / Galiz.) | |
| place | Valença (Portugal) / Tui (Spain) | |
| Entertained by | REFER , Estradas de Portugal , ADIF , Dirección General de Carreteras . | |
| construction | Lattice girder bridge | |
| overall length | 318 m | |
| width | 6.5 m | |
| vehicles per day | 5569 | |
| building-costs | 1,259,143 Spanish pesetas | |
| start of building | 1882-84 | |
| completion | 1885 | |
| opening | March 25, 1886 | |
| planner | Pelayo Mancebo y Ágreda | |
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The Ponte Internacional ( . Port , . Galiz ) or Puente Internacional ( . Span ), Germanized International Bridge , also Ponte Rodo-Ferroviária de Valenca , Ponte de Valenca or Puente de Tuy is a 318 meter long girder bridge over the Portuguese - Spanish border river Minho . The bridge connects the two cities of Valença (Portugal) and Tui (Spain). It was built between 1882 and 1884, opened in 1885 and is used for both road and rail traffic.
In order to distinguish the bridge to the neighboring A3 / A55 motorway bridge, which was opened in 1993 , it is now often called the “old international bridge” ( Antiga Ponte Internacional or Ponte Vella Internacional ).
description
The superstructure of the bridge consists of an iron lattice girder and is supported by five pillars standing in the river . The 318 meter long bridge has two levels; the lower 6.5 meters wide is for road traffic, the upper one for rail traffic. The street Avenida de Espanha leads over the bridge from the Portuguese side, from the Spanish side the Avenida de Portugal , which are each numbered as N-13 (Portugal) and N-550 (Spain) in the respective road network. In 2004, an average of 5,569 vehicles drove over the bridge per day.
The non-electrified tracks over the bridge belong to the Ramal Internacional branch of the Linha do Minho , the Porto - Valença (- Monção ) railway line . There are currently four pairs of local trains per day crossing the bridge, as of December 2013 there was no freight traffic.
Today the bridge is jointly owned by the Portuguese state-owned companies Rede Ferroviária Nacional and Estradas de Portugal and the Spanish state-owned companies Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias and Dirección General de Carreteras .
history
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The first proposals for a railway connection between Portugal and Galicia date back to 1856. The Portuguese King D. Pedro V favored the construction of a railway line to Vigo (via Porto), as this would make the journey to France shorter than the traditional route from Badajoz . In 1867 the Portuguese government presented various proposals for a railway line to Galicia. The construction work for the ultimately decided route variant via Viana do Castelo began in 1872, the section of the Linha do Minho railway to Valença was opened on August 6, 1882. The line on the Spanish side, between Tui and Vigo, went into operation on March 17, 1878.
The Portuguese and Spanish governments agreed on the joint project in 1880, which was jointly decided in 1881. The public competition began on July 30, 1881, in which a total of seven applicants participated with ten proposals, including Gustave Eiffel , the Société de Construction et des Ateliers de Willebroeck (Belgium) and the Société Anonyme des Hauts Fourneaux, Usines et Charbonages de Sclessian (also Belgium). The Portuguese-Spanish commission decided on the design by the architect Pelayo Mancebo y Ágreda , the execution of the construction work was won by the Société Anonyme de Construction et Entreprise de Travaux Publics from Braine-le-Comte (Belgium).
Construction work on the bridge began in 1882, equally financed by both governments. According to sources, the cost was 1,259,143 Spanish pesetas (236,718 $ 884 Portuguese escudos ), of which the Portuguese government paid 621,708.14 pesetas (116,881 $ 130 escudos), 637,434.86 pesetas (119,837 $ 754) by the Spanish government. The bridge was largely completed in April 1884, and the Spanish and Portuguese rail networks were connected via the bridge in August of the same year. In February 1885, the two governments signed a joint contract for the future maintenance of the bridge. The grand opening took place on March 25, 1886. At the opening, a train decorated with the two national flags drove from Valença to Tui.
In the following decades, relatively little changes to the bridge, with the Caminho Português of the Camino de Santiago crossing the bridge since 1884 . In 1970, the Portuguese engineer Edgar Cardoso checked the construction and determined an urgent need for renovation, which was then carried out by the Spanish government. Another complete renovation of the bridge began in 1997. In 2001/2002 the two state-owned companies Refer (Portugal) and Renfe (Spain), responsible for the respective rail networks, renewed the rails and the substructure to increase the maximum speed from 10 to 90 km / h and the load capacity of 1550 to increase to 2400 tons. Further renovation measures took place in 2011.
To mark the centenary of the bridge in 1986, commemorative plaques were placed on both ends of the bridge. Since the Schengen Agreement came into force in 1995, the border buildings at both ends of the bridge have lost their original function. While the local police moved in on the Spanish side, the Portuguese building is still empty today.
Web links
- Xose Fernandez Fernandez: History of the International Bridge of Tuy over the Miño (Spanish, PDF)
Individual evidence
- ↑ above: Observatorio transfronterizo España-portugal. (PDF) Documento n.º 4. Ministério das Obras Públicas, Transportes e Comunicações, Ministerio de Fomento, March 2006, p. 18 , accessed on April 25, 2014 (Spanish).
- ^ Comboios Regionais> Linha do Minho. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Comboios de Portugal, December 15, 2013, archived from the original on April 22, 2014 ; Retrieved April 25, 2014 (Portuguese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c Alexandra Lima, Paulo Amaral, Paula Noé: Ponte metálica sobre o Rio Minho / Ponte metálica Ferroviária e Rodoviária sobre o Rio Minho. Sistema de Informação para o Património Arquitectónico (SIPA), accessed April 25, 2014 (Portuguese, 1998/2007).
- ↑ without author: Ponte Internacional de Valença - Obras de reabilitação. Speech Ferroviária Nacional, EPE, December 19, 2011, accessed April 25, 2014 (Portuguese).
