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16-534: The viaduct was designed by Julius W. Adams and James P. Kirkwood and built in 1847–48 by the New York and Erie Railroad , of locally-quarried random ashlar bluestone , except for three brick interior longitudinal spandrel walls and the concrete bases of the piers. This may have been the first structural use of concrete in American bridge construction. It was built to solve an engineering problem posed by

32-714: A National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1973 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. In 2005, the Norfolk Southern Railway leased the portion of the line from Port Jervis to Binghamton, New York to the Delaware Otsego Corporation , which operates it under the name Central New York Railway . The only railroad currently using it

48-607: A repurposed rail viaduct provides a garden promenade on top and workspace for artisans below. The garden promenade is called the Coulée verte René-Dumont while the workspaces in the arches below are the Viaduc des Arts . The project was inaugurated in 1993. Manhattan's High Line , inaugurated in 2009, also uses an elevated train line as a linear urban park . In Indonesia viaducts are used for railways in Java and also for highways such as

64-451: A width of 22 meters. Viaducts are commonly used in many cities that are railroad hubs , such as Chicago, Birmingham, London and Manchester . These viaducts cross the large railroad yards that are needed for freight trains there, and also cross the multi-track railroad lines that are needed for heavy rail traffic. These viaducts provide grade separation and keep highway and city street traffic from having to be continually interrupted by

80-441: Is Delaware Otsego's New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway . Viaduct A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide valley, road, river, or other low-lying terrain features and obstacles. The term viaduct

96-507: Is built across land rather than water, the space below the arches may be used for businesses such as car parking, vehicle repairs, light industry, bars and nightclubs. In the United Kingdom, many railway lines in urban areas have been constructed on viaducts, and so the infrastructure owner Network Rail has an extensive property portfolio in arches under viaducts. In Berlin the space under the arches of elevated subway lines ( S-Bahn )

112-596: Is derived from the Latin via meaning "road", and ducere meaning "to lead". It is a 19th-century derivation from an analogy with ancient Roman aqueducts . Like the Roman aqueducts , many early viaducts comprised a series of arches of roughly equal length. The longest viaduct in antiquity may have been the Pont Serme which crossed wide marshes in southern France. At its longest point, it measured 2,679 meters with

128-407: Is used for several different purposes, including small eateries or bars. Elevated expressways were built in major cities such as Boston ( Central Artery ), Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seoul , Tokyo and Toronto ( Gardiner Expressway ). Some were demolished because they were unappealing and divided the city. In other cases, viaducts were demolished because they were structurally unsafe, such as

144-655: The Bloor-Danforth subway line on the lower deck, over the steep Don River valley . Others were built to span settled areas, crossing over roads beneath—the reason for many viaducts in London. Viaducts over water make use of islands or successive arches. They are often combined with other types of bridges or tunnels to cross navigable waters as viaduct sections, while less expensive to design and build than tunnels or bridges with larger spans, typically lack sufficient horizontal and vertical clearance for large ships. See

160-542: The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel . The Millau Viaduct is a cable-stayed road-bridge that spans the valley of the river Tarn near Millau in southern France. It opened in 2004 and is the tallest vehicular bridge in the world, with one pier's summit at 343 metres (1,125 ft). The viaduct Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge in China was the longest bridge in the world as of 2011 . Where a viaduct

176-645: The Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco, which was damaged by an earthquake in 1989. However, in developing nations such as Thailand ( Bang Na Expressway , the world's longest road bridge ), India ( Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway ), China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nicaragua, elevated expressways have been built and more are under construction to improve traffic flow, particularly as a workaround of land shortage when built atop surface roads. Other uses have been found for some viaducts. In Paris, France,

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192-541: The Long Island Rail Road . Accounts differ as to whether Kirkwood worked on the bridge himself, or whether Adams was responsible for the plans with Kirkwood working as a subordinate. The lead stonemason, Thomas Heavey, an Irish immigrant from County Offaly, worked on other projects for Kirkwood, primarily in New England. It took 800 workers, each paid about $ 1 per day, equal to $ 35.22 today, to complete

208-403: The bridge in a year. The falsework for the bridge required more than half a million feet of cord and hewn timbers. The original single broad gauge track was replaced by two standard gauge tracks in 1886. The roadbed deck under the tracks was reinforced with a layer of concrete in 1958. The bridge has been in continual use for more than a century and a half. The viaduct was designated as

224-564: The traffic load, necessitating a viaduct for "through" traffic. Such bridges also lend themselves for use by rail traffic, which requires straighter and flatter routes. Some viaducts have more than one deck, such that one deck has vehicular traffic and another deck carries rail traffic. One example of this is the Prince Edward Viaduct in Toronto, Canada, that carries motor traffic on the top deck as Bloor Street , and metro as

240-445: The train traffic. Likewise, some viaducts carry railroads over large valleys, or they carry railroads over cities with many cross-streets and avenues. Many viaducts over land connect points of similar height in a landscape, usually by bridging a river valley or other eroded opening in an otherwise flat area. Often such valleys had roads descending either side (with a small bridge over the river, where necessary) that become inadequate for

256-414: The wide valley of Starrucca Creek. The railroad considered building an embankment , but abandoned the idea as impractical. The Erie Railroad was well-financed by British investors but, even with money available, most American contractors at the time were incapable of the task. Julius W. Adams, the superintending engineer of construction in the area, hired James P. Kirkwood, a civil engineer who had worked on

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