Millau Viaduct
fosterandpartners.com
fosterandpartners.com
And it's not only beautiful, it's also very useful. Before it was built, you had to go through small roads and villages, which, in addition to taking more time, was not very comfortable for the people living there.
The town is at the bottom of a very steep valley and it is very difficult to avoid (this involves extremely steep and narrow farm roads that are difficult to navigate without a small 4x4).
Has it prospered or faded now that there is no through-traffic?
The viaduct has made some villages on the plateaus much more accessible. Small industrial businesses have set up shop.
The only thing that sucks is that the little railway line will probably never reopen.
You thing during particular holidays the single lane somehow has even less lanes, less grade separation and such? That would be quite a phenomenon.
In particular most intersections on the now D809 are roundabouts, continuing on the D809 often requires making a turn on the roundabout, and roundabouts are notorious for gridlocking with high turn volumes. Let that gridlock cascade across multiple intersections and you now have rapidly deteriorating travel times.
At other times, traffic is less high so this gridlocking is less likely to occur.
That’s quite the understatement. I remember taking one hour to get to the bottom of the valley from the Larzac, and then one hour again to get back up on the other side. We’d often stop for lunch or a coffee in Millau just to do anything at all that was not sitting in the car, but the city was entirely choked by this overwhelming traffic. The viaduct was a massive improvement. And sure, it affected local restaurants and bars, but the city is much more liveable now.
Also I can't help but appreciate that the gently curved bridge makes it possible to drive to Béziers [1].
I am not against living life to the fullest but I also like the idea of telling my war stories in many years.
Signed, Someone who isn't a ton of fun at parties themselves but who might perhaps be slightly more fun at parties than you.
https://diffusion-lidarhd.ign.fr/visionneuse/?copc=https:%2F...
I only see "Norman Foster" listed in the team section?
expressing a fascination with the relationship between function, technology and aesthetics in a graceful structural form
I want to believe what's written. At the same time, I never got any proof for such sentences, it's always blurry, poetic, without any demonstration trying to minimize varying factors as scientist like to do.
For comparison the planned 4.2km Lower Thames Crossing has already cost £1.2bn (€1,400 million) just for the planning phase with nothing built. The French know how to build.
> Plans for the 14.5-mile (23km) route were approved in March after a 16-year process that has already cost £1.2bn.
The approach from the Mediterranean side is very well done. The road curves with a hill blocking most of the bridge. As you turn the corner, the bridge comes into view. As you move onto the bridge and valley drops away and you get an idea of how high you are.
Later on I got the view from an airplane after leaving Béziers. A different view but did show how the bridge sits in the landscape.
If you get the chance to visit, you should.
The local police are quite reasonable with fines of only about €15 if caught.
As Bad Bunny said, "debi tirar mas photos!", because I didn't take nearly enough.
For some reason it’s much easier to gauge how tall something is when I can simultaneously, through shadow, also see how long it is.
It's elegant. It conveys simplicity and utility.
An object on which you would add nothing and would subtract nothing.
- it was completed ahead of schedule and with no budget overrun. The construction company (Eiffage) had a strong incentive to do so: the deal was that they supported a most of the cost but in exchange got to collect the tolls
- they have small mirrors all over the viaduct used to measure its movement - a bit like real-life telemetry
I agree that's surprisingly graceful and elegant and doesn't detract from the environment, which is quite an achievement. And audacious in the extreme.
First time I was there it was sunny. Second time it was so cloudy that I couldn't see the bridge. But as I drove away I saw the fog clear up, so I went back, paid the toll second time and enjoyed an absolutely stunning view.
TIL the plural of plateau is plateaux in the UK.
> plural plateaus also plateaux
-- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plateau
The variant plateaus would be more common in both forks, I think.
Ha, that's such a funny way to think of it the differences. And actually quite accurate as a description in the case of American English, since Noah Webster actively rejected the original British spelling.