Osaka Bay Bridges: Namihaya Bridge

The shoreline of Osaka Bay is crowded with artificial islands. Consequently, hundreds of interesting-looking bridges are used to connect these islands and to cross the many rivers around Osaka Bay.

The Namihaya Bridge crosses at the mouth of the Shirinashi River just south of the Minato Bridge in Osaka. It is a long viaduct that includes a 580 m three-span continuous steel box girder bridge.

It is difficult to tell from this photo, but the Namihaya is the longest horizontally curved box girder bridge in Japan. The viaduct is 1573 m long with a haunched girder center span of 250 m. The superstructure is supported on large, single column reinforced concrete bents. Perhaps because land is so expensive in Japan, bridges are seldom supported on multi-column bents. The bridge is 11 m wide and serves as an evacuation route for the Taisho-naiko port area in times of disaster. It was completed in 1994.

It seems like all the bridges in Osaka Bay are painted either red, white, or turquoise. I wonder if there is some significance to the color or if they just look good on bridges?

Osaka Bay Bridges: Namihaya Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.