Proud France Inaugurates World's Highest Bridge

REUTERS | December 14, 2004

MILLAU, France - President Jacques Chirac inaugurated the world's highest bridge on Tuesday, a creation taller than the Eiffel Tower, longer than the Champs Elysees and designed to end a traffic bottleneck in southern France.

Conceived by British architect Norman Foster, the slender white viaduct in the picturesque Tarn Valley will provide a new motorway link between Paris and the Spanish border, easing congestion in the Rhone valley during the busy summer months.

Chirac unveiled a simple commemorative plaque before plunging into a throng of white helmeted construction workers, as an air display team flew past the bridge trailing red, white and blue smoke -- the colors of the national flag.

He hailed the viaduct as a ``marvel of art and architecture,'' a monument to French engineering genius that was a ``miracle of equilibrium'' and projected a bold, successful, modern image.

``The Millau Viaduct is a magnificent example, in the long and great French tradition, of audacious works of art, a tradition begun at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries by the great Gustave Eiffel,'' Chirac told a reception.

The highest of the bridge's seven concrete pillars stands at 343 meters (1,125 ft), 19 meters (62 ft) higher than the Eiffel Tower. At almost 2.5 km (1.5 miles), it is longer than the Champs Elysees and slightly curved to afford drivers a dramatic view of the surrounding countryside and the ancient town of Millau with its medieval bell tower.

``The whole thing looks impossibly delicate,'' Foster said in a telephone interview of what he called his ``sculpture in the landscape,'' a 394-million-euro ($523 million) project financed by construction firm Eiffage.

``It is a dialogue between nature and the man-made,'' he said.

ELEGANCE

The engineering feat has drawn rapturous praise for its elegant lines, which allow it to blend seamlessly into the surrounding region famed for its gorges, medieval villages and Roquefort cheese.

``We were attracted by the elegance and logic of a structure that would march across the heroic landscape and in the most minimal way connect one plateau to the other,'' said Foster, who designed the glass dome that tops Germany's Reichstag parliament building in Berlin.

``We were driven by the scale of the idea and the shared passion for the poetic dimension of engineering and its sculptural potential,'' he said in a statement.

The Millau viaduct has drawn thousands of visitors since construction was started exactly three years ago.

The bridge will open to traffic at midnight on Friday and is expected to channel an average of 10,000 vehicles per day, with peaks of 25,000 during the summer holidays.

Eiffage will charge a toll of 4.60 euros in the low season and 6.50 euros in July and August for cars using the bridge, part of the A75 motorway linking the cities of Clermont-Ferrand to Beziers. Lorries will pay 19 euros.

Eiffage has a 75-year concession to operate the viaduct and has guaranteed the structure for 120 years.

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