Ganter Bridge, Cable-stayed bridge in Ried-Brig, Switzerland.
The Ganter Bridge is a 678 m long prestressed concrete road bridge on the Simplon Pass road, 10 km south of Brig in Valais. Its S-curve roadway is carried by a hollow box girder with spans of 35, 50, 80, 127, 174, 127, 50 and 35 m, supported by two main towers and five smaller piers. Triangular concrete walls above the roadway encase the cable-stays like sails.
The Ganter Bridge was built between late summer 1976 and December 1980, after the canton of Valais asked Christian Menn for an alternative to a planned tunnel estimated at about 50 million Swiss francs. Menn's cable-stayed proposal was commissioned without a competition. The new alignment shortened the Simplon Pass road by 1.7 km. From 1980 until the Poya Bridge opened in 2014 it had the longest span in Switzerland.
The bridge is listed as a class B Swiss cultural property of regional significance under KGS number 09077 in Ried-Brig's inventory. Its local name is Ganterbrigga in Walliserdeutsch. Engineer Christian Menn's design was commissioned without a competition after the canton saw his preliminary proposal.
The bridge carries the Simplon Pass road (Nationalstrasse 9) about 10 km south of Brig, on the territory of Ried-Brig. It is a road crossing with no footpaths, so visitors view it from outside rather than walking it. The older Ganterbrücke of 1801–1805 stands roughly 800 m upstream, east of the modern span.
Triangular concrete walls rise above the roadway to house the stressed cables and shield the structure from wind loads and weather impacts. This design approach was innovative for its time and demonstrated new possibilities for mountain infrastructure projects.
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