China Is Building The World's Longest And Highest Glass-Bottom Bridge

[cirr]

China Is Building The World's Longest And Highest Glass-Bottom Bridge

The Huffington Post | By James Gerken

Posted: 05/20/2015 12:14 pm EDT Updated: 05/20/2015 12:59 pm EDT

Timid visitors to China will definitely want to miss this tourist attraction. The country's Hunan province is building the world's highest and longest glass-bottom bridge and intends to open it this summer.

The bridge will span a canyon in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, some 984 feet (300 meters) above the ground. It will be over a quarter of a mile long (430 meters) and almost 20 feet wide, according to state media.

An artist's rendering of the bridge.

The bridge's bravest visitors will also reportedly have access to the world's highest bungee jump.

The bridge was designed by the firm of Israeli architect Haim Dotan. It is expected to hold 800 people, and Dotan hopes it will be used as a runway for fashion shows, according to CNN.

Construction is well underway, according to state media, and officials hope to complete the project by the end of July.

The Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon skywalk bridge will add to a growing number of dizzying tourist attractions in China.

Another glass-bottom bridge over a cliff opened in Hunan province last year, but it's only (well, "only") about 590 feet above the ground. An even scarier tourist attraction opened in 2011: the glass skywalk at Tianmen Mountain in Zhangjiajie, which allows visitors to walk along a 3-foot-wide glass path on the side of a mountain, with a 4,000-foot drop below.

Not to be outdone, a cantilevered glass skywalk opened this year in Longgang National Geological Park in the Chinese city of Chongqing, with a 2,356-foot drop below it. It extends out 16 feet farther than the Grand Canyon Skywalk in Arizona, according to Gizmag.

China Is Building The World's Longest And Highest Glass-Bottom Bridge

 

[sadiqqs]

 

[Gijoe]

Glass bridge bottom to cross the mountains. It look scary, can it with stand an earthquake of any magnitude?

 

[AndrewJin]

O my, I feel dizzy after viewing these photos.

 

[cirr]

Definitely not for the faint-hearted！

Count me out！

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

I guess they are taking this to a whole new level

(1219 meter drop)

 

[Cossack25A1]

Hmm, because I have to tendency to look down whenever I am standing on a place that is high above the ground, I am not allowed this bridge, even you pay me tons of money, I will not cross the bridge; too afraid of heights.

 

[Aepsilons]

Hmm, because I have to tendency to look down whenever I am standing on a place that is high above the ground, I am not allowed this bridge, even you pay me tons of money, I will not cross the bridge; too afraid of heights.

Too afraid of heights? Come on buddy, a little bit of pain (visual) never hurt anybody.

 

[Cossack25A1]

Too afraid of heights? Come on buddy, a little bit of pain (visual) never hurt anybody.

Well it has something to do with the either the feeling of falling whenever I am standing in high places, which is worsen by always looking down when in high places.

 

[Huan]

I am going to be very nervous walking through that bridge.

 

[Kyle Sun]

I guess they are taking this to a whole new level

(1219 meter drop)

This damn bridge almost scared the shit out of me when I walked on it.

 

[21stCentury]

How is the glass reinforced?

 

[TaiShang]

The World’s Longest (and Scariest) Glass Pedestrian Bridge

When the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge opens in the fall, it will be the longest glass pedestrian bridge in the world. The structure stretches from one rocky summit to the next with little apparent effort. The bridge seems to float 1,300 feet above the ground, almost as though it were part of the clouds.

The engineering plans call for it to be 20 feet wide—large enough to host the fashion shows its developers plan to hold there—with a center platform that provides an unobstructed view and, for the adventurous types, a place for bungee jumping. The white supporting beams beneath the 5-centimeter-thick safety glass were originally 10 feet wide. Dotan wasn’t pleased. “I told them, ‘No, there’s no way,’” he says. “The bridge has to disappear.”

After more than three years of work, the structural engineers got the beams down to not quite 2 feet, thanks to suspension cables that stretch from the cliffs to the center of the span. Although the bridge has an ethereal look, Dotan says it can withstand wind gusts of more than 100 mph.

In recent years, China has shown a particular proclivity for building transparent bridges in epic locations. There’s a diaphanous structure in Hunan Province that sways in the breeze 650 feet off the ground; another see-through walkway that wraps around a cliff.

Dotan’s design is by far the most sophisticated of them. It’s so elegant, in fact, its engineers have adopted a poetic way of thinking about the bridge. “The engineers described it as thin as a wing and as light as a swallow,” Dotan says with a laugh. “My god, can you imagine a structural engineer describing a bridge like this?”

 

[terranMarine]

It's like walking on an invisible bridge. Only if i was paid with enough gold bars i might risk this daunting task

 

[cirr]

It's like walking on an invisible bridge. Only if i was paid with enough gold bars i might risk this daunting task

Walk the sidewalks。they are not see-throughs as illustrated in post #13。