Samora Machel Bridge

The Ponte Samora Machel is a toll road bridge over the Zambezi River in the city of Tete in Mozambique. She was the first and for a long time the only road bridge over the Zambezi River in Mozambique. It not only connects Tete with Moatize on the other side of the river, but in the course of the road 103 also the areas north and south of the Zambezi, granted the northern parts of the country access to the port city of Beira, and is also part of the road link between Malawi and Zimbabwe.

It is named after Samora Machel, the first president of the People's Republic of Mozambique (1975 - 1986).

The Ponte Samora Machel is located 120 km downstream of the Cahora Bassa dam on the only pedestrians can cross the Zambezi River. 230 km down river is the Dona Ana Bridge, a railway bridge, and 280 km downstream of the Established in 2009, Armando Guebuza - bridge at Caia, the last bridge before the mouth of the Zambezi River in the Indian Ocean.

The Ponte Samora Machel was built by the Portuguese colonial government from plans by Edgar Cardoso and opened in 1973.

There is a total of 720 m long suspension bridge with two lanes, each with a walkway. They crossed the Zambezi with three clamping fields of 180 m and the outer gates, each 70 m, and the four pylon pairs. Their relatively flat taut suspension cable remain at the center of the tension fields still several feet above the bridge deck. Your hangers are not perpendicular, but oblique, alternately stretched forward and backward, creating a zig -zag pattern. The anchor blocks are large, located partly above ground concrete structures.

The bridge suffered under the heavy traffic during the construction de Cahora Bassa dam and from a lack of maintenance and repair, so that the traffic at the beginning of the century to one lane in each case and a truck had to be restricted. 2009 started with a renovation that was completed in January 2011.

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