Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday inaugurated the country’s longest rail-cum-road bridge over Brahmaputra river at Bogibeel near Dibrugarh in Assam.
After reaching Dibrugarh in the afternoon from New Delhi, Modi directly flew to Bogibeel in a chopper and inaugurated the 4.94-km-long double-decker bridge from the southern bank of the river.
Modi, along with Assam Governor Jagdish Mukhi and Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, also walked a few metres on the bridge. The strategically important bridge over the mighty Brahmaputra will remove communication bottlenecks to several districts in Arunachal Pradesh.
The bridge, which begins at Dibrugarh and ends at Dhemaji districts of Assam, will connect parts of Arunachal Pradesh by road as well as railway
Have a look at these pictures of the Bogibeel Bridge. pic.twitter.com/V3XcfE2uxS
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 25, 2018
A historic day for the Northeast! Speaking at the inauguration of the Bogibeel Bridge. Watch. https://t.co/Y2L6Aos4zW
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 25, 2018
The 4.9 km-long Bogibeel Bridge on the Bramhaputra river is India's only fully welded bridge for which european codes and welding standards were adhered to for the first time in the country, said Chief Engineer Mohinder Singh.
Mr Singh said a fully welded bridge has a low maintenance cost.
The bridge, constructed at an estimated cost of Rs. 5,900 crore, has a "serviceable period of around 120 years", he said.
The bridge reduces travel time from Assam to Arunachal Pradesh to four hours and will cut out the detour of over 170 km via Tinsukia.
Dibrugarh: Visuals from #Bogibeel Bridge which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Shri @narendramodi on December 25. #Assam
— ALL INDIA RADIO (@AkashvaniAIR) December 24, 2018
Pictures: ANI pic.twitter.com/9AefPaw2lY
The bridge has a two-line railway track on the lower deck and a three-lane road on the top deck. For the first time in Indian Railways, the girder has steel floor system for railway tracks and concrete for road.
"Early flood in the river Brahmaputra restricted the working season to a very short period of approximately five months (from November to March) and demanded huge mobilization of construction equipment," said Mr Singh.
Transportation of concrete across river channels of 600 metre to 900 metre width from both the north and south banks was the biggest challenge, he said.
To overcome this, concrete was pumped through pipeline laid over buoys.
More photos of the #bogibeel bridge in #Assam pic.twitter.com/Sgf9FdsL71
— Faizan Haidar (@FaiHaider) December 23, 2018
"Eighty-thousand tonnes of steel plates was delivered for the project via a combination of rail and road transport, while a 1,000 tonne hydraulic jack and strand jacks linked with the substructures were used for moving steel truss over the pillars," he said.
'Most 2D' automatic nesting software was used to generate efficient two-dimensional cutting plans for fabricating the steel superstructure for the bridge.
After December 25, people, especially patients from Assam Medical College located here, can travel straight from Dibrugarh from the other side of the river instead of using the ferries.
The bridge is part of infrastructure projects planned by India to improve logistics along the border in Arunachal Pradesh. This includes the construction of a trans-Arunachal highway on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, and new road and rail links over the mighty river and its major tributaries such as the Dibang, Lohit, Subansiri and Kameng.