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Sunshine Skyway Bridge Choose another wonder
Location: St. Petersburg and Bradenton, Florida, USA Completion Date: 1987 Cost: $244 million Length: 29,040 feet Type: Cable-Stayed Purpose: Roadway Materials: Steel, concrete Longest Single Span: 1,200 feet Engineer(s): Figg & Muller Engineering Group Completed in 1987, the Sunshine Skyway is the world's longest cable-stayed concrete bridge. It is probably the best known of the several dozen cable-stayed bridges that have been built in the United States since the late 1970s. Its popularity may be due to its unique color -- its cables are painted a bright taxicab yellow -- but the bridge also boasts an interesting history.
The Sunshine Skyway isn't the first bridge to The Florida Department of Transportation began construction on a safer Sunshine Skyway Bridge only days later. more than 300 precast concrete segments were linked together with high-strength steel cables to form the roadway. Protecting the new bridge from ships was a big priority, so they installed large concrete islands, called dolphins, around each of the bridge's six piers to absorb unwanted impact. Since it opened to traffic in 1987, the sleek, new Sunshine Skyway has won dozens of engineering and design awards. Here's how this bridge stacks up against some of the longest-spanning bridges in the world. (total length, in feet)
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