The 4.94-km-long bridge is being inaugurated on late PM AB Vajpayee’s birth anniversary in Assam.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Tuesday inaugurate the Bogibeel Bridge – India’s longest rail-cum-road bridge – in Assam’s Dibrugarh.
The foundation stone of the bridge was laid by former prime minister H D Deve Gouda on January 22, 1997, while work started on April 21, 2002, under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government. The 4.94-km-long bridge is being inaugurated on late PM AB Vajpayee’s birth anniversary on December 25.
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. He added that a fully welded bridge has a low maintenance cost. The total cost of bridge construction is an estimated of Rs 5,900 crore and has a “serviceable period of around 120 years”, he said. The bridge mainly reduces travel time from Assam to Arunachal Pradesh to four hours.
It will also reduce the time of travelling from Delhi to Dibrugarh by about three hours to 34 hours as against 37 hours presently. The best part is the bridge has a two-line railway track on the lower deck and a three-lane road on the top deck. For the very first time in Indian Railways, the girder has a steel floor system for railway tracks and concrete for the road. And the first train on the bridge will start at around 11 am on Tuesday.
