UST: News

The bridge across the Kerch Strait with the length of 19 kilometers became the longest in Eurasia. The total cost of the project amounted to almost USD 4 billion. Only the lazy would not discuss it today: engineering and geopolitical thoughts are crossing swords, everyone has become a "couch engineer" and seeks to express his expert opinion. However, emotions are emotions, but let's address the archives; there is always a lot of interesting things there. A remarkable material is found at the website of the string transport's creator Anatoly Yunitskiy. The turbulent nineties, October 18, 1992. Quote:

"The design of the bridge overpass across the Kerch Strait to link Crimea with Russia has been developed. The bridge provides motorway and rail traffic. The motorway string overpass is mounted on pole supports and railway tracks are placed in tunnels passing under the bottom of the Strait. The thickness of the silt reaches dozens of meters in some places, therefore, the tunnels are located below the depth of the silt, rest on the solid soil of the seabed and serve as the foundation of the bridge overpass."

In the nineties, any idea about a bridge of this distance seemed still fantastic, but Yunitskiy proposed a project that could surpass others because of its innovation. Today, the bridge across the Kerch Strait is built, but it is still an ordinary bridge, it is remarkable primarily by its length.

Anatoly Yunitskiy, General designer of Skyway Technologies Co., comments, "This project is very complex and ambitious: there is a lot of silt there and complex supports are expensive. In my project, the railway tunnel is also the foundation. This tunnel is a float lying on the bottom, it is a structure with zero buoyancy. At the top, there is a lightweight and slender bridge. Certainly, the cost of this project would be three times less for implementation, due to its design. Thanks to a fundamentally different type of project designing, our project is also more sustainable. Anyway, this is not the last bridge on the planet. It's just the beginning."

If the idea arises, it will take its shape sooner or later; therefore, the ideas in mobility often float in the air and repeat one another. Thus, an "aerial gondola" was presented recently in America, vaguely reminiscent of string transport. Today the ideas converge in one thing on the whole planet: it's time to remove transport from the surface of the earth, either upwards, or downwards.

And, if the idea of a string bridge was born, then it will come to life eventually.