Bridge over the river Oder
The tender for the construction of a gigantic bridge as part of the Wrocław ring road was launched last week. Both the location and design of the bridge will make construction a demanding task. The project is a part of a highway connecting the A4 road with planned express highways S5 to Poznań and S8 to Warsaw. It will span the Oder river at the mouth of the Ślęza tributary. Once built, the bridge will be the highest and longest single-pylon concrete bridge in Poland. Estimates of the project's cost reach zł.700 million.
According to the project's design, which was drawn up by professor Jan Biliszczuk, the bridge will be 1.7 kilometers long and will consist of three parts, 611, 612 and 521 meters in length, respectively. A key feature of the project is a 122-meter-high pylon, the highest in Poland. The bridge will also be the first in Poland to have a computerized structural monitoring system for detecting damage.
Construction is to start in the second half of this year and is estimated to last three construction seasons.
"A completion date of 2009-10 is a feasible prospect," the Voivod of the Lower Silesia voivodship, Krzysztof Grzelczyk, told WBJ. However, he stressed that the timing would be determined to a large extent by the speed of the tender procedure.
"There is huge interest from construction companies in the matter," he noted, and pointed out the possibility of many court appeals on the future outcome of the tender.
Another challenge is the question of ownership of the plots upon which the bridge and the ring road will be constructed as not all of them have yet been acquired by the government. Grzelczyk stated that the matter is all the more complicated, since local district officials are holding back from taking more decisive steps, as they await legislative changes at the national level regulating the decision-making process in such issues.
As for funding, at the moment all the money for the investment is to come from the state budget. Still as Grzelczyk said, the voivodship will make an effort to obtain EU subsidies for the project.
