Panaji, January 27: Union transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari and Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar on Sunday inaugurated the newly built four-lane, cable-stayed bridge over river Mandovi in Goa on Sunday. The bridge is named after former Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and is called the Atal setu (bridge). Rafale Audio Clip: Congress Trying to Fabricate Facts, Says Goa CM Manohar Parrikar.

The 5.1 km cable-stayed bridge over river Mandovi in Goa is 2,50,000 tonnes heavy and is designed to support and sustain burgeoning traffic in Panjim besides being an aesthetically pleasing landmark for tourism development in Goa. On New Year, Manohar Parrikar Attends Office for First Time in 4 Months, BJP Leaders Cheer Goa CM’s Arrival in Porvorim.

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The bridge will facilitate routing of Mumbai bound traffic coming from Bangalore via Ponda route and Old Goa towards NH-17, bypassing the main Panjim City, said the government statement. Manohar Parrikar Health Update: Bombay High Court Dismisses Petition Seeking Goa CM’s Medical Examination.

Besides, it will also help to ease the bottlenecks caused at Panaji KTC Circle, and Panaji Entrance as the same route is currently being used by local traffic as well as NH-17 Highway bound traffic, it added. About 66,000 vehicles use this route every day, leading to hours of congestion, especially during the peak tourist season in Goa. Manohar Parrikar Health Update: Goa CM Meets BJP MLAs at Residence, Minister Mauvin Godinho Says He’s ‘Recovering Well’.

Goa Infrastructure Development Corporation (GIDC) vice chairman said, ” The bridge is made of 1 lakh cubic metres of high strength, high performance concrete enough to fill 40 Olympic size swimming pools. It weighs 2.5 lakh tonnes which is equivalent to that of 570 Boeing aircraft.”

He added that 13,000 tonnes of corrosion resistant reinforcement steel, 32,000 square metres of structural steel plates and 1,800 kilometres of high tensile pre-stressing strands have gone into making the bridge. “The bridge has 88 high tensile strength cables in the state-of-art single place harp type cable stay system. It has a real-time force monitoring mechanism,” he added. The bridge is a joint effort of GIDC and engineering and construction major Larsen and Toubro.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 27, 2019 10:59 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).