New Kelani Bridge connected at the centre over the river

The new Kelani Bridge at Peliyagoda has been connected at the centre over the river today. The event was held under the patronage of Highways Minister Johnston Fernando.

The six-lane bridge, which aims at easing the traffic congestion in Colombo and suburban areas, is the first ever to be constructed in Sri Lanka with hi-tech stay cables.

Construction of the new state-of-the-art bridge is scheduled to be completed by the end of September.

After the Colombo-Katunayake Expressway was declared open, the number of vehicles entering the city of Colombo on a daily basis soared considerably. As the capacity of the existing bridge was inadequate for the large number of vehicles driving across, preliminary plans for a project to construct a new bridge were drawn up in 2014.

Thereby, the Highways Ministry and the Road Development Authority (RDA) launched the project to construct a new suspension bridge with six lanes adjacent to the existing one.

This bridge features a cable support system that distributes the weight of the deck between two towers. The deck is hung on vertical suspender cables and the main cables, suspended between towers, are connected to the anchorages at each end of the bridge.

Accordingly, the deck of the new Kelani Bridge was connected today at the centre over the river.