Hyogo Prefecture, Japan Bridges: Port-Liner Elevated Railway in Downtown Kobe

November 2013 (34.69517 Degrees, 135.19599 Degrees) Port-Liner Elevated Railway

After visiting the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge we checked into our hotel in Kobe and walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. In these photos we are walking under the Port-Liner Elevated Railway which turns southeast from Sannomiya Station through downtown Kobe towards Port Island. This area had a great deal of damage during the 1995 Kobe earthquake and I managed to snap a few photos of the many improvements with my iPhone.

The bridges have been retrofitted with steel column casings and viscous fluid dampers, which will hopefully prevent severe damage during the next earthquake. However, the use of 'C' Bents and short radius curves will result in large superstructure displacements and large torsional and flexural moments in the supports.

Hyogo Prefecture, Japan Bridges: Port-Liner Elevated Railway in Downtown Kobe by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.