From a 164-kilometer viaduct in China to Rio-Niterói, see the record-breaking bridges in each category and the engineering feats behind them
What is the longest bridge in the world? The answer is more complicated than it seems, because it all depends on how you measure it: total length, stretch over water, free span between towers or volume of concrete. The confusion is so great that Guinness World Records had to create separate categories to appease disputes between record holders.
To organize this collection of superlatives, we have gathered five champion bridges, one of each type, with their feats, technical difficulties, and extreme numbers. They range from the Chinese mega-works that cut the sea to the Brazilian champion over Guanabara Bay.
The Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, a 164.8-kilometer viaduct that is part of the high-speed railway between Beijing and Shanghai, is the highest bridge on the planet, in any category. Inaugurated in 2011, it holds the Guinness title and, curiously, cannot be crossed by car: it is only used by trains. So long that a single stretch of it, with 114 km, would be the second longest bridge in the world by itself.
The big challenge was the soft soil of the Yangtze River delta, which forced the structure to be raised on thousands of pillars instead of resting it on the ground. Built in four years by about 10,000 workers, at a cost of US$ 8.5 billion, it was designed to withstand earthquakes of magnitude 8 on the Richter scale, typhoons and even vehicle impacts. A stretch of about 9 km passes over Yangcheng Lake.
Here lies the controversy that messed up the records. When China’s Jiaozhou Bay opened in 2011, Guinness declared it the longest bridge over water, and Americans protested. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana crosses 38.4 km of water in a practically straight line, while the Chinese Causeway, longer in total, made curves and added stretches on land. The solution was Solomonic: two categories were created.
Pontchartrain held the record for the longest continuous bridge over water, and Jiaozhou Bay for the longest aggregate length. Formed by two parallel lanes supported by 9,500 concrete piles, the Louisiana bridge is so long that, in the middle of the journey, the driver cannot see dry land in any direction. To speed up the work, the pieces were prefabricated on land and taken by barges to the lake. Its two structures were completed in 1956 and 1969.
Opened in 2018, this 55 km complex is the longest sea crossing in the world and combines bridge, island and tunnel. In order not to disrupt ship traffic at the busy mouth of the Pearl River, the route plunges for 6.7 km into a submerged tunnel, the longest immersed tunnel for automobiles on the planet, connected to the elevated part by two artificial islands.
There were more than 400 thousand tons of steel, and the gigantic sections of the tunnel were towed and sunk to the seabed with millimeter precision. The work reduced the journey between Hong Kong and Macau from three hours to about 45 minutes and was designed to withstand magnitude 8 earthquakes and winds of up to 340 km/h. A curious detail for those who drive: as Hong Kong keeps the English hand, but the mainland uses the right hand, all traffic on the bridge follows the right.
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Overall length is impressive, but the most difficult feat of engineering is to cover a large distance without supports in the middle. In this regard, the record holder is the 1915 Çanakkale bridge, in Turkey, whose central span is 2,023 meters, the longest distance ever suspended between two towers. Opened in 2022 over the Dardanelles Strait, it connects Europe to Asia and shortened to six minutes a crossing that took 90 by ferry. The measure is no coincidence: the 2,023 meters honor Turkey’s centenary in 2023.
It cost US$ 2.7 billion and was built in about five years; Adding the access viaducts, it reaches 4,608 meters. To face the strong winds and high seismicity of the region, the engineers adopted a deck with a double box aerodynamic profile, supported by 318-meter towers, the tallest ever erected on a suspension bridge.
The largest bridge in the country and one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, the Presidente Costa e Silva bridge, the famous Rio-Niterói, is 13.29 km long, of which 8.83 km over Guanabara Bay. When it opened in 1974, it was the second longest in the world, behind Pontchartrain. The highlight, literal and figurative, is the central span: 300 meters of a steel beam suspended 72 meters high, to let ships pass in and out of the port.
The most complex stretch was the kilometers over the sea, which required digging the foundations into rock at the bottom of the bay. Built with the technique of successive swings, still little used at the time, the work holds more than 2,150 km of prestressing cables inside and remains the largest prestressed concrete bridge in the Southern Hemisphere. Today, it receives about 150 thousand vehicles per day.
The records, however, have an expiration date. Italy has resumed the project of a bridge over the Strait of Messina, which would connect Sicily to the mainland with an even larger span than the Çanakkale, and China is already building structures that promise new superlatives in the coming years.
