France gets highway in the sky with world’s tallest road bridge
President Jacques Chirac lifted a French flag from a plaque and dedicated the Millau span, billed as the world's tallest road bridge.
"Mission accomplished," said Jean-Francois Roverato, president of the Eiffage construction group that built and will operate the bridge.
When it opens to vehicles on Thursday, the bridge will enable motorists to take a drive through the sky 891 feet above the Tarn River valley for a 1.6 mile stretch through France's Massif Central mountains.
Chirac praised the bridge's designers and builders for creating "a prodigy of art and architecture a new emblem of French civil engineering".
The bridge will serve as a symbol of "a modern and conquering France."
Designed by British architect Lord Foster, the steel-and-concrete bridge with its streamlined diagonal suspension cables rests on seven pillars the tallest measuring 1,122 feet, making it 53 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower.
It was designed to have the "delicacy of a butterfly," Lord Foster said, the man who also designed London's Millennium Bridge.
Colorado's Royal Gorge Bridge, towering 1,053 feet above the Arkansas River, is the world's tallest suspension bridge but it is designed for pedestrians. The Kochertal viaduct in Germany was the highest roadway, at 607 feet.
Millau, whose skyline is dominated by the bridge, had until now been best-known outside France as the place where anti-globalisation crusader Jose Bove dismantled a McDonald's restaurant.
The €400 million bridge is to open a new north-south link between Paris and the Mediterranean and is expected to relieve bottlenecks caused by trucks and tourists headed to the Riviera. Some 28,000 vehicles a day are expected to cross the bridge in the summer months, and about 10,000 a day the rest of the year.
Toll fees for motorists will vary from €5 in winter to €70 in summer. Trucks will have to pay €25 year-round.
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