XN000022-1995-07-05 — Page 11

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Rambler Channel Bridge achieves major milestone

Construction of the main spans of the Route 3 Rambler Channel Bridge will be completed this month making it the first bridge under the Airport Core Programme (ACP) to be completed.

This significant milestone will be reached two months ahead of schedule and just over a year after construction of the bridge deck began.

The 0.5 kilometre long bridge spans the busy marine channel between Tsing Yi Island and Kwai Chung and is part of the ACP's Route 3 project.

"The speed at which the work has been completed is remarkable and was made possible by the use of an innovative method of bridge construction introduced to Hong Kong by the lead contractor on the project, Dragages et Travaux Publics," said the Chief Engineer of the Route 3 project, Mr Duncan Siu.

Apart from the smaller Rambler Channel Bridge, two other much larger ones are being built under the ACP. They are the 2.2 kilometres long Tsing Ma suspension bridge and the 820 metres long Kap Shui Mun cable-stayed bridge.

Mr Siu said the last pair of the 312 precast concrete segments, which form the bridge deck spanning across the Rambler Channel, will be positioned this week. Then all that remains to be done to finish the bridge deck is to complete the side spans on the Tsing Yi side and this is scheduled to take place next month.

He said the concrete segments were erected by a special piece of lifting equipment known as a launching girder which allowed the contractor to erect up to 60 metres of bridge deck in a week, considerably faster than other more conventional methods of bridge building.

The use of a launching girder to build bridges is a relatively new technique for Hong Kong used only once before on the Kwun Tong Bypass project.

Not only did the equipment help to reduce the construction period but it also enabled the bridge deck segments to be erected without the need to build temporary supports from the channel thus eliminating the need to close off sections of the Rambler Channel.

"Apart from the speed factor, this was a major advantage of using a launching girder as this meant that there would be no disruption to road and marine traffic during the construction period," Mr Siu said.