Today, July 6, 2023, the Danube Bridge - Tulcea/Brăila, an important infrastructure project in Romania, was officially inaugurated, as announced on the Ministry of Transport's Facebook page by Mr. Ionel Scărișoreanu, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Transport.

Here are the technical details of this investment project:

• The total length of the bridge is 1974.3 meters.
• The height of the towers is approximately 193 meters from the top of the foundation.
• The bridge has 3 spans: a main span of 1120 meters and two side spans of 489.6 meters on the Brăila side and 364.6 meters on the Tulcea side.
• The metal deck weighs 20,860 tons, and its segments were made at the Brăila shipyard using steel from the Galați Steel Complex.
• For the main cable installation, a special process was used: cable wires of approximately 5.44 mm were used, forming bundles of 544 wires each, and the 16 torons subsequently formed the main cable. With a total length of 81,000 km, these cables are the largest in Europe.
• The pouring of the 4 main pillars was done continuously, and the sliding formwork mechanism was guided by lasers. Approximately 2 meters were constructed every 24 hours.
• The 4 main bridge pillars are hollow inside and are equipped with elevators and access stairs for maintenance purposes.
• The expansion joints were specially ordered and produced for this bridge, providing +/- 1 meter of movement on the Brăila side and +/- 1.26 meters on the Tulcea side.
• For the construction of the bridge, 200,000 m3 of reinforced concrete, 25,000 tons of reinforced steel, 6,700 tons of steel for the two main cables, and 8,600 meters of bored columns were used.
• 14,000 tons of asphalt were laid on the bridge alone.
• For road construction, 1.4 million m3 of embankment, 280,500 m3 of granular material, 97,000 m3 of reinforced concrete, 6,500 tons of reinforced steel, and 17,000 meters of bored columns were used.
• The total asphalt surface area of the roads is 312,130 m2.
• The total length of the roads (including the bridge) is 23.413 km and consists of two sections: the main road Brăila - Jijila with a length of 19.095 km, and the connection road with DN22 Smârdan - Măcin with a length of 4.328 km.

Brăila - Jijila section (Phase I) has a length of 19 km and is equipped with two lanes in each direction, merging lanes, shoulders, a median zone, and guardrails.

DN22 Smârdan - Măcin connection road (Phase 2) has a length of 4.3 km and is equipped with one lane in each direction. The connection road starts from km 7+940 of the main road (Brăila-Jijila) and intersects with DN22 Smârdan-Măcin.

The main works provided for in the contract:

-Suspended bridge over the Danube -2 access viaducts -1 viaduct over the railway -23.4 km of road works (roads) -35 bridges, passages and minor structures -86 footbridges -9 road junctions and roundabouts -1 Maintenance Center and Coordination -1 toll station

More information:

- it is designed to have a lifespan of 120 years; - it has a monitoring and control center that will permanently record the state of the bridge, through the 30 sensors installed on the bridge at essential points; - for this structure, the most complex and advanced test project of a bridge in Romania was carried out; - at this bridge, a dehumidification system will work for all bridge assemblies, including the metal deck and cables. The cables are insulated on the outside with a protection that ensures tightness, and the air inside will be permanently dehumidified and monitored, so as to ensure an anti-corrosive environment; - to ensure durability and high anti-corrosion protection, the metal deck is also dehumidified inside, certain longitudinal stiffeners being used as channels for the distribution of dehumidified air in the internal space of the deck, and a system of sensors will monitor the maintenance of the humidity state from the box below levels that cause oxidation. The relative humidity will be maintained below 90% to prevent corrosion and to allow circulation on the bridge in urgently, in any season; - the bridge is equipped with sidewalks, but they will be used strictly for its maintenance and will not be open to public pedestrian traffic; -no bridge crossing fee is paid in the first 5 years.

The initial value of the project is 1,995,932,260 RON, without VAT, financed from non-refundable external funds, and the builder is Asociea Astaldi S.P.A. - IHI Infrastructure System Co. Ltd.

In the first stage, road traffic will be opened on the partial connection, with unloading in Tulcea county on the road to Măcin (stage I), and then the option to Jijila (stage II) will be completed as soon as possible.