The Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train project has reached a new milestone. The construction of the 480-meter-long river bridge over the Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad, one of the most complex and challenging engineering structures of the bullet train corridor, has been successfully completed. At a height of about 36 meters (118 feet), the bridge is as tall as a typical 12-story building.
The bridge, located near the Ahmedabad-Delhi main railway line of the Western Railway, is located at a height of about 14.8 meters above ground level. Geographically, it falls between the Sabarmati and Ahmedabad bullet train stations—about 1 kilometer from Sabarmati station and about 4 kilometers from Ahmedabad station.
While passing through a busy city like Ahmedabad at ground level, the bullet train route passes over existing flyovers, railway lines and metro corridors. The piers of the Sabarmati Bridge have been made higher than normal to provide the necessary vertical clearance for safe vehicular movement over all these structures.
Engineering design that does not harm water flow
A total of 8 circular piers with a diameter of 6 to 6.5 meters have been built in the construction of the bridge. Out of which 4 piers have been placed in the river bed, 2 on both banks and 2 outside the bank. Due to this careful arrangement, there will be no major obstruction in the natural flow of the Sabarmati. Normally, there are spans of 40 meters on the bullet train route, but here long spans of 50 to 76 meters have been placed to reduce the number of piers. The bridge has five spans of 76 meters and two spans of 50 meters, in which 23-23 segments in each span have been prepared on the spot (in-situ casting) and connected.
Use of special construction methods
The 'Balanced Cantilever Method' was adopted for the construction of this river bridge. This technique creates a balanced bridge deck by placing segments on piers with equal weight on both sides and post-tensioning them, without erecting any temporary scaffolding below the riverbed.
It is worth mentioning that a total of 25 river bridges are being constructed along the entire Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train route, out of which 21 are in Gujarat and 4 in Maharashtra. With the construction of this landmark bridge over Sabarmati, the work of 18 out of the 21 river bridges scheduled in Gujarat has now been completely successfully completed.
