Reinaldo de Oliveira Bridge, Metal viaduct in Osasco, São Paulo, Brazil
The Reinaldo de Oliveira Viaduct, known as the Metal Bridge, is a steel viaduct in Osasco with a free span of 150 meters over the Bussocaba stream. It is 300 meters long, 50 meters high, and weighs 2,200 tons. Its design was made in Austria, and it was inaugurated on December 20, 1992.
The viaduct was designed in Austria and built by Usiminas Mecânica with the contractor Andrade Campos after the 1990 tender, which required prior experience with 150-metre spans. It opened on 20 December 1992 at a final cost of US$20 million, then the world's second-largest steel viaduct after one in Barcelona. The debt to Usiminas was only settled in 2018, under mayor Rogério Lins.
The viaduct is known locally as the Ponte Metálica or metal bridge, and its name honours Reinaldo de Oliveira, a dentist who led the Osasco emancipation movement and died on 22 September 1991, shortly before the bridge opened. In 1991 the Union of Osasco Students campaigned to have it named Capitão Carlos Lamarca instead.
The structure primarily serves motor vehicles and has no dedicated pedestrian paths. Those on foot should use alternative routes to cross this area.
The viaduct's 150-metre steel span was, at its 1992 opening, the second longest of its kind in the world, behind only Barcelona. The design was drawn up in Austria, and the winning bidder, Usiminas Mecânica, was the sole company meeting the tender's requirement of prior experience with 150-metre spans. The city only finished paying off the construction debt in 2018.
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