The cable-stayed bridge

"Today...this method is often a civil engineer's first choice for bridges...They go up faster than alternative approaches and cost less because they use less material." - Amy Nordrum, Scientific American, February 2015.

I think the first cable-stayed bridge that I saw was the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay. I probably saw it in 1988 when I visited Florida for a physics conference (in Hollywood) and I made a trip to Clearwater to visit relatives. Since Tampa Bay is so large, you can see it from a great distance, and it looks very impressive.

Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Tampa Bay, Florida, U.S. At dawn.

The second one I saw was across the Savannah River, near Savannah, Georgia. That one caught me by surprise as we were moving from Washington to Florida in 2001. You don't really see the bridge until you are almost on it, and I wasn't expecting it.

Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge, Savannah, Georgia, U.S.

One bridge that I haven't seen, but would like to, is the Santiago Calatrava bridge in Redding, California, across the Sacramento River. Technically, this is a "cantilever spar cable-stayed" bridge, a design that was pioneered by Calatrava and used in some of his other bridges in Spain and Argentina, among others.

Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay, Redding, California, U.S.

The quote at the top is from an article about the new Tappan Zee bridge in New York, which will be a cable-stayed bridge, with eight traffic lanes and will be the widest cable-stay in the world. The article claims that there's a cable-stay under construction in Los Angeles. I can't think of where it might be, except for the Port of Los Angeles, near Long Beach.

A final bridge that I'd like to see, but I didn't get a chance when I was in Germany, is the Millau Viaduct, in France. Of all the photos I've seen, it is the most impressive.

Millau Viaduct, France.