Lupu Bridge

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The Lupu Bridge (卢浦大桥), in Shanghai, China, is currently the world's longest arch bridge. It was officially opened on June 28, 2003. With a main span of 550 metres over the Huangpu River, the 2.5 billion yuan (US$302 million), 3,900-metre Lupu Bridge beats the previous record holder, the New River Gorge Bridge in the American state of West Virginia.

1 Name
2 Statistics
3 Controversy
4 Trivia
5 External links

[edit] Name

The name of the bridge, Lupu, is an abbreviation of the two districts of Shanghai which it links - Luwan District on the north bank, and Pudong New District on the south bank. This follows the naming convention of the three earlier bridges on the Huangpu River - Nanpu (Nanshi-Pudong), Yangpu (Yangpu-Pudong), and Xupu (Xuhui-Pudong).

[edit] Statistics

Completed in: 2003
Status: in use
Cost: Yuan 2 500 000 000
Location: Shanghai, China
Crosses: Huangpu River

[edit] Controversy

The Lupu Bridge is heavily criticized by the Chinese public and scholars alike for being wasteful, not over whether the bridge was needed or not, but rather what types of bridge is needed. Although the project was relatively free of corruption during its bidding and the construction process, the public sentiment against it was nonetheless extremely strong, because it was viewed as the a showpiece project for the Shanghai municipal government.

During the hearings and evalutions of the construction of the bridge, scholars / experts agreed with the local government in that a bridge was indeed needed for further development, but that was where the similarity ended. The experts have continuously advocated the local government on alternative designs that cost much less and produce the same result, but the local government, under the reign of disgraced mayor Chen Liangyu, decided against the advice to select the current arch bridge design, and the reason was simply because for the cheaper alternative bridge designs, there were already in existence in Shanghai, and the arch bridge design not only provided a first for the city of this design, but also enabled the city to claim a world record for being the longest. Critics point out that such showpiece project is the proof of the city officials' superficiality, and ignored the real need of the city, causing the city and its residents to pay much more and much longer in the long run to recover the investment cost.