A bridge to nowhere is a
bridge where one or both ends are broken, incomplete, or unconnected to any
roads. If it is an
overpass or an
interchange, the term overpass to nowhere or interchange to nowhere may be used respectively.[2][3]
Origins
There are five main origins for these bridges:
The bridge was never completed for reasons such as
cost or disputed
property rights.
One or both of the bridge's ends have collapsed or have been destroyed, for example, by earthquake, storm, flood, or war.
The bridge is no longer used, but was not
demolished because of the cost; for example, the bridges on an
abandoned railway line.
The bridge is completed, but the
streets connecting the bridge are not completed.
The bridge or any other part of the construction can be regarded as a
pork barrel project aimed at useless fund spending or money laundering with minor or negligible public usefulness.
Metaphoric use
Further, the term "bridge to nowhere" may be used by
political opponents to describe a bridge (or proposed bridge) that serves low-population areas at high cost, a symbol of
pork barrel spending.[4]
It may also be used to describe a useless construction in overall.
It can simply mean as well "dead end" or "useless" in that way without referring to a construction.
Incomplete and damaged bridges
Argentina
The two-lane elevated concrete vehicle bridge across the Cosquin River in Cosquin, province of Cordoba, Argentina, that was intended to connect Calle Pedro Ortiz, to the west, to Avenida Capitan Aviador Omar Castillo, to the east, was never opened. The span of the bridge itself was complete, but it was never connected to the road system on either end, and the ends of the span remained blocked by steep piles of rubble. In lieu of the elevated vehicle bridge, the small, low Onofre Marimon Bridge connected the two streets for small volumes of pedestrian traffic. In 2020 it was finally connected at both ends and open to vehicle traffic,[5] and the lower bridge was demolished. The remains of the bridge can still be seen at Puente Mercedes Sosa.
Port Nelson Bridge, an isolated rail bridge near
Port Nelson, Manitoba. The connecting rail line was never finished due to labour and material shortages, a lack of financial or political support, and high cost. The envisioned port was also poorly designed and was found to require excessive
dredging due to significant sand bars. The project was greatly criticized by several politicians (the media calling it a "gigantic blunder").[6]
Gaglardi Way in
Burnaby, British Columbia, ended suddenly at the south end at just a forest, due to a residential subdivision beyond the point with two cloverleaf ramps that were blocked off, now removed along with the dead end peculiarity in the 2000's.
New Yalu River Bridge in Dandong. The US$330 million bridge was completed in 2015, but on the
North Korean side it is not connected to the road network.[7]
There are several bridges to nowhere, started to be built as a part of extraterritorial highway
Vienna-
Wrocław (so-called "
Hitler's highway"), which remain unfinished and unconnected to the road network.
France
Pont Saint-Bénézet in
Avignon over the
Rhône river. Several arches were broken by flood in the middle of the 17th century.
The colloquial name for a bridge to nowhere in Germany is "Soda-Brücke" (a pun on "so da" = "just there"). Many of the bridges were built in the 1970s as part of the
Autobahn network, but the oil crisis and rising environmental consciousness slowed many highway extensions.
The
Bridge of Rising Sun in
Choluteca, completed in 1998, became a bridge to nowhere the same year when
Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras. While the bridge itself survived with minor damage, the roads on either end got entirely washed away and the
Choluteca River had carved itself a new channel on the side, leaving the bridge to span dry ground. It eventually got reconnected to the highway in 2003.
Hong Kong
In New Kowloon, a flyover used to connect
Prince Edward Road East outside
Regal Meridien Hotel to the old
Kai Tak Airport (coded K72). The airport has since moved and been demolished, leaving the flyover unused,[8] until a new offramp was built in 2020 to connect the K72 flyover to
Olympic Avenue [
zh-tw] (Road D1) and opened to traffic in September 2021.
In Victoria City on Hong Kong Island, the western end of
Connaught Road West Flyover (part of
Route 4) was intended to be connected to the shelved
Green Island Link and a trunk road along the southwestern coast of the island (previously numbered Route 7).
A former railway bridge sits over the
Váci út in
Budapest. Its rail line was disconnected in the early 1990s, and the east side of the bridge was demolished to make room for new construction. (47°33′18″N19°04′32″E / 47.554984°N 19.075610°E / 47.554984; 19.075610) A second bridge sits over a minor road on the same rail line to the southwest, and the former station is now a parking lot.
India
Broken bridge, in
Chennai,
South India, partly collapsed due to strong currents of the river in 1977 and has never been repaired.
Eintveit Bridge, a 25 metres (82 ft)-long two-lane road bridge in
Etne municipality in
Hordaland county, was completed in 1962 and was intended to be part of a road on the northwestern side of
Åkrafjorden. But the road was never built, and the bridge has remained unused except occasionally by hikers. In 2014 broadcaster
NRK organized the "opening" of the bridge. Two cars were flown in by helicopter and then drove across the bridge.[9][10]
Philippines
The Loboc Bridge in the town of
Loboc, Bohol. A steel and concrete bridge which commenced construction in the 1970s but was left unfinished allegedly due to opposition from the Loboc parishioners since the bridge might destroy the 400-year old
Loboc Church.[11]
Poland
Several structures on unfinished
Olimpijka motorway. Its construction started in 1976 with the propaganda goal of completing it in time for the
Moscow Olympics in 1980 (hence its unofficial name, as part of Berlin-Moscow connection). Because of the economic crisis which hit the country in the late 1970s and continued throughout the 1980s, only a small section was opened. Construction of another stretch resumed only in 2001, as a part of
A2 motorway. Since 2010 the plan was to finish the whole link between the border with Germany and Warsaw, this time for the
UEFA Euro 2012 football championships. This meant that weathered remains of 1970s structures had to be demolished in the 2010s.
Several structures on unfinished
Berlinka,
Nazi Germany's Reichsautobahn Berlin-Königsberg started in 1936. Some of them have been demolished as late as the 2010s.
Romania
Ciurel Bridge is an unfinished infrastructure project located in Bucharest, Romania. It gained significant attention and earned the nickname "Bridge to Nowhere" or "Bridge to Nothing" on social media. The construction was initiated as part of an expansion towards the A1 Highway, but the remaining section of the project, an 8.3-kilometer road, has not been built. Currently, the bridge only serves as a left turn and resolves the traffic issue for those traveling from Virtuții Road to Splaiul Independenței. Pro Infrastructura, an organization that monitors infrastructure projects, argues that the Bucharest City Hall should have made a decision regarding the continuation of the road to the A1 Highway, covering the distance of 8.3 kilometers. Without this connection, the Virtuții Junction (Ciurel Passage) does not effectively address the traffic congestion, as it was originally intended to alleviate the traffic on Iuliu Maniu Boulevard. Sorin Ioniță, an activist who has closely followed the project, criticized it, stating, "This passage will cross a T-intersection on a picturesque bridge with ramps, descend on the other side, and lead the cars to the exact same place as before, Virtuții Road. All at an impressive cost of over 400 million lei. This road passage in Sector 6 is probably the most useless and foolish investment in Romania since '89,". The construction of the passage began in 2010 and was initially scheduled for completion in December 2014. Delays in the project were caused by litigation and financial constraints.
Russia
A two-lane vehicle bridge in
Pavlovsky Posad, completed in 2011, continues the minor Vachevskaya Street in the west across the Vokhna River. In the east, there is a dead end, as no vehicle road has been built there, with only a footpath branching off to another street. The bridge may become integrated into traffic once a new road tunnel under railway is completed nearby, and together they would replace a problematic level crossing.[12] The bridge was open for vehicle traffic in July 2015.[13]
Viaduct in Kopráš, a never-used railway viaduct in the village of
Kopráš near the town of
Jelšava in south Slovakia. The viaduct is 120 metres (390 ft) long and 40 metres (130 ft) high. It was finished in 1945 but was never used, because the railway to the viaduct was never completed due to the events of
World War II.[14] Next to the viaduct are two finished tunnels without any connection to railways. The tunnel near the village of Slavošovce is 2,800 metres (9,200 ft) long, and the tunnel near Kopráš is 350 metres (1,150 ft) long. These tunnels to nowhere were also never used, because railway construction ended in 1948 before its completion.[15]
Bewley Street Footbridge, in
Colliers Wood, London, constructed in 2007, was blocked off at one end due to a dispute over the cost of building an access ramp.[17] The ramp was finally completed in June 2015 and renamed "Gam Gurung Bridge" after a local councillor.[18]
Barracks Road and Cavalry Street bridges north of the A671 Westway in
Burnley,
Lancashire, cross the East Lancashire railway line and were stopped up at both ends following the construction of the
M65 in 1981.
An abandoned highway bridge at 51°16′44″N0°09′17″W / 51.279002°N 0.154646°W / 51.279002; -0.154646. It was planned for the
M23 to extended further north from its abrupt ending as part of the
London Ringways scheme. Some of the southern end is still accessible and used as a depot for highway maintenance, but most of it is fenced off, notably when the A23 and open M23 pass under wide bridges.
M8 Bridge to Nowhere, two separate bridges over the M8 motorway in
Glasgow: one eventually had an office block constructed on it; the other, originally built in the 1970s, remained unfinished until July 2013.
A stub protruding from a road bridge across the
A1020 around
Beckton which forms part of a southbound exit. It was planned to be part of a cancelled approach to the East London River Crossing.[22]
United States
Arboretum "ghost ramps" (built 1960s), a set of ramps and bridges south of Marsh Island near
Portage Bay in
Seattle that were intended to be an interchange from
Washington State Route 520 and the proposed
R. H. Thomson Expressway. When plans for the expressway were scrapped following a citizens'
freeway revolt, the interchange ramps and bridges remained in place and are mostly unused. On January 31, 2013,
Washington state announced that the ghost ramps would be removed sometime between 2014 and 2016.[23] They were finally demolished in 2017, despite calls to preserve them in memory of the protests that cancelled the expressway project.[24]
Big Four Bridge (built 1895), a 2,530-foot (770 m) single-track railroad bridge over the
Ohio River in
Louisville, Kentucky, which was abandoned in 1968 and had both its approach spans removed and sold for scrap the following year. In February 2013, the bridge was reopened on one end for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.[25] In May 2014, the
Jeffersonville, Indiana, ramp opened, allowing pedestrians and cyclists to travel between downtown Jeffersonville and
Waterfront Park in Louisville.[26]
A pair of unused overpasses near what is now the southern terminus of
Connecticut State Route 11. These bridges were built as part of the original plan for Route 11, which would have seen it extend further south to I-95 in New London. Construction was halted in 1972 due to lack of funding.
Miles Glacier Bridge (built 1910), also known as the "Million Dollar Bridge", was converted from railroad use to motor vehicle use; It is at the northern end of the unfinished
Copper River Highway near
Cordova, Alaska. Construction stopped in 1964 when an earthquake damaged the 1,549-foot (472 m) bridge. Although since repaired and reopened, the bridge is nonetheless currently of limited utility due to damage at other points along the route.
Hoan Bridge (built 1973), a 2-mile (3 km) road bridge over the
Milwaukee River in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was unused until access roads were completed in 1977, was lacking freeway connections at the southern end until 1998, and was "going nowhere again" for two months while closed for major repairs after a span partially collapsed in December 2000.
Mebane's Bridge is a road bridge over the
Dan River in
Rockingham County on the outskirts of the town of
Eden, North Carolina, which was at the center of the landmark Luten Bridge Co. vs. Rockingham County lawsuit that made jurisprudence in 1929 when the contractor continued work on it well after the contract to build it was rescinded and subsequently sued to be reimbursed for this work.
Pier 19 (demolished 2012) of a proposed second span of the
Ambassador Bridge connecting
Windsor, Ontario, and
Detroit, Michigan. No second span had ever been approved for this privately owned bridge, largely because the proposal would dump excessive traffic onto Windsor city surface streets, but its owners built ramps for the proposed span in an attempt to counter an internationally supported proposal for a
Detroit River International Crossing to the
Windsor-Essex Parkway further downriver.[27] The unauthorized ramp was removed in 2012 by court order.[28]
An interchange on
US 160 southeast of
Durango, Colorado completed in November 2011.[29] The bridge was intended to connect to a relocated
US 550, but disputes arose over the new US 550 alignment's potential effect on wetlands, archaeological sites, and property fragmentation.[30] The
Colorado Department of Transportation signed an agreement with the
Federal Highway Administration in spring 2015 regarding the final alignment of US 550, and is now seeking construction funding.[31]
The
San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge bicycle and pedestrian path was opened in September 2013, but was only connected on the
Oakland end of the bridge. In October 2016, the connection to
Yerba Buena Island was opened, but as of 2018 there is no bicycle or pedestrian access across the western portion of the Bay Bridge to
San Francisco.[32]
Near
Greenville, Mississippi, there are several bridges to nowhere for the US 82 bypass that was built before construction halted for years before resuming in 2022.
Bridges to unpopulated or low-population areas
Australia
John Pirie Bridge in
Port Pirie was built in the 1970s to encourage development of industry on the other side of Port Pirie Creek. No development ensued; the bridge leads only to a few gravel roads otherwise unconnected.[33]
Canada
In
Jasper National Park, Alberta, at the outlet of
Maligne Lake, there is a bridge that crosses the outlet river and proceeds about 300 metres (980 ft) to a parking lot and several hiking trails and a boat launch. The bridge cost millions of dollars to build and was part of a proposed route through the mountains that was never completed.
The
Harry Blaney Bridge in
County Donegal spans 340 m (370 yd) and spans
Mulroy Bay, connecting the
Fanad and
Rosguill peninsulas. Opened in 2009 at a cost of
€20 million, it was criticised as a bridge to nowhere due to the low population of the area (less than 3,000 on the two peninsulas). Supporters cited the
tourism potential of linking the two areas.[36][37][38] In 2014, local paper The Donegal Daily admitted that the bridge was "still rarely used."[39]
Malaysia
The
Bunting Island Bridge in Yan district, Kedah. The 2.3 kilometres (1.4 mi) bridge that connect from mainland to an uninhabited Bunting Island. Build around 2002–2005, the bridge cost MYR120 million.
Malta
The
St Elmo Bridge leads from the foreshore of
Valletta to the breakwater at the entrance of the
Grand Harbour. Critics disapproved of the construction cost of €2.8 million and have called it a "bridge to nowhere".[40][41]
Russia
The
Russky Bridge in
Vladivostok was criticised as a "bridge to nowhere", costing about one billion US dollars and serving an island where only 5,000 people live.[42]
A four-lane vehicle overpass across the
Moscow Ring Road at kilometer 83 (sometimes called the Molokovsky Overpass) continues Molokova Street in the
Lianozovo District of
Moscow outside the city. Molokova Street is in a gated community with only local traffic allowed; at the other end, the bridge serves only the Lianozovo Cemetery with a small parking lot next to it, coming to a dead end before a forest. As a result, the overpass only receives significant traffic on
prayer for the dead days such as
Saturday of Souls.
In 2014, Alaska's longest bridge, the
Tanana River Bridge, was completed across the
Tanana River at a cost of $187 million. The 3,300 feet (1,000 m) long bridge consists of a 12-foot (3.7 m) wide gravel path that connects a gravel spur road off the
Richardson Highway near
Salcha, Alaska, to the roadless Tanana Flats. The bridge will be almost exclusively for military use with limited access for hunting license holders.[45] Due to the current lack of infrastructure in the Tanana Flats and the ongoing uncertainty in Department of Defense spending, there may be limited use of the bridge.[46]
Obsolete bridges and approaches
Canada
Ontario Highway 548 in Canada has a short stub of roadway (with double-yellow line still visible) next to a more recent bridge approach.
CN's Lachine Canal Swing Bridge in
Montreal, Canada, an abandoned railway bridge that has been left in the 'open' position in the middle of the
Lachine Canal between its successor rail bridge and the Wellington Bridge.[49]
In the
United Arab Emirates, a
suspension bridge links
Abu Dhabi city and Hodariyat island. The bridge was opened in 2012, but vehicles are not allowed to use it. It appeared to be a waste of money.[50][51] Recently the bridge has opened; the approach road has been extended on the island, and a parking lot has been paved. There are also some small cafes there.
The
Illinois Central Missouri River Bridge between
Omaha,
Nebraska and
Council Bluffs,
Iowa is a disused double-swing railroad bridge. Closed to rail traffic in 1980, the eastern span was secured in the open position to allow for unimpeded river traffic. Initially, the bridge was planned to be used as a contingency should issues affect the
Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) to the south, but the rails that formed the approach on the Iowa side were removed in the mid-2000s.[52]
A bridge that once carried West Mound Street over
I-70/
I-71 in
Columbus, Ohio was abandoned in the 1990s due to redevelopment projects that left West Mound Street with two discontinuous sections. The bridge subsequently became a
homeless camp before being cleared by the city of Columbus for safety reasons. The bridge is slated to be demolished in 2022 by
ODOT without a replacement as part of a widening project of the I-70/I-71 corridor in
Downtown Columbus.[53]
^Ou, Lingxiao (2012-08-10).
"The Results Are In: Chinese Stimulus Fails". The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 11 August 2012. The world's longest sea bridge, built in Qingdao, [the
Jiaozhou Bay Bridge ] has few users, making it the Chinese version of the "Bridge to Nowhere".