Tokyo, Japan's Bridges: Tsukuda Bridge across the Sumida River (2)

June 2011 (35.668 Degrees, 139.781 Degrees) Tsukuda Bridge

A look from under the deck of yesterday's Tsukuda Bridge. This bridge appears to be well constructed and well maintained. It's surprising that the girder sections were assembled with rivets in 1964. The steel ties on the Kachidoki Bridge used a single steel bearing but the wide girders on the Tsukuda Bridge use two steel bearings at each support.

Every highway bridge in Japan was retrofitted after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, but I didn't notice any modifications to the Kachidoki or the Tsukuda Bridge. Maybe they were found not to need a retrofit, although most of these brittle steel bearings have been replaced with neoprene pads. Also, Japanese bridge engineers are lucky they can drain rain water from their decks directly into the river. Environmental law in the United States requires that all the rain water on the deck must be carried to a wastewater treatment plant. 

Tokyo, Japan's Bridges: Tsukuda Bridge across the Sumida River (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.