India's billion-rupee bridge collapses again

According to India Today, at around 6 p.m. local time on Sunday, the under-construction Aguwani-Sultanganj bridge spanning the Ganges in Bihar, India, collapsed once again, and witnesses at the scene captured footage of the collapse.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ordered an investigation into the collapse and demanded that those responsible be identified. The bridge had also collapsed last year. It is reported that the bridge cost 17.1 billion rupees, has a total length of 3.1 kilometers, and was originally expected to be completed around November to December.

Photo of the April 2022 collapse

At the end of April last year, the bridge also collapsed. The repeated collapse of the bridge has raised questions about the quality of construction materials.

The Aguwani-Sultanganj Bridge (abbreviated as the A-S Bridge) is located in Bihar, India, and crosses the Ganges, India's mother river. Once completed, the A-S Bridge will connect the "Bhagalpur district of Sultanganj" on the north and south sides of the Ganges with the "Khagaria district of Aguwani," greatly shortening the travel distance and time between the two banks.

The A-S Bridge is an extradosed cable-stayed bridge, also called a partial cable-stayed bridge. It usually has the appearance of a cable-stayed bridge, with very short towers. This type of bridge is a typical hybrid structure between a cable-stayed bridge and a cantilever beam bridge, featuring small-angle stay cables that may not extend along the full length of the deck and a more robust upper deck structure, and is characterized by short towers, rigid girders, and concentrated cables.

Its main girder has relatively high stiffness and is the main load-bearing component, while the stay cables stiffen the girder and adjust the forces acting on it. Compared with continuous beam bridges, this type of bridge has a more novel structure, greater spanning capability, and is simpler and more economical to construct; compared with cable-stayed bridges, it is easier to construct, saves materials, and has greater main girder stiffness.

Some experts said bluntly that since this is a mature and widely used technology, it cannot be ruled out that there were no problems in the design, but that various hidden dangers existed during construction and accumulated over time, leading to the problem of being unable to withstand storms and collapsing.