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Russian Plans To "Reopen Kerch Road Bridge At Midnight" - Mind The Gap [1]

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Date: 2023-07-17

Russian authorities have announced plans to partially reopen the Kerch road bridge. Special Kherson Cat has tweeted

Russian officials regarding the Crimean bridge. - “One track of the railway part of the Crimean Bridge has minor damage”, “two-way traffic on one side of the Crimean Bridge is planned to be launched on September 15, on the other side - in November” “Partial traffic for passenger cars, first weighing up to 3 tons and then up to 5 tons, on the more intact side of the bridge is planned to be launched at midnight.”

Satellite photos showing the bridge have now been published (see above). You can see that one two-lane side of the bridge has significantly moved off one of its support and the other just seems to be dislodged a bit (/s). Other photos show there is a step between the two sections of the “opening” side. It may help to visualize this to look at this photo of Stonehenge as the building system is remarkably similar.

With Stonehenge two vertical stones support a horizontal stone with another butted against one end and it also supported on a further upright. Now think of the horizontal stones as the roadway and the uprights as the bridge supports. The bridge is similar except each upright support two road sections laid horizonally. Stonehenge has a sort of socket system to keep the structure together. With modern bridges the weight of the roadway sits on the uprights in a similar way with flexible seals holding them in place on the bridge supports and butted up against each other. These allow some movement to take account of ground movement from things like minor earthquakes.

The satellite photo shows where the explosion was. There is a darkened semi-circle centered on the edge of the roadway. (You can also just make out that there was minor damage to the rail bridge from the blast). The road section on the blast side has moved completely off its support, in a very similar manner to the earlier hit. The explosion has lifted the other roadway and it has fallen back on the bridge support. I presume the Russians propose to reopen this side by putting some sort of ramp to cover the gap. Even carrying 5 tons, that would be about the weight of a fully laden small/mid size SUV or saloon car. I doubt if Putin will be driving his Mercedes over the bridge again soon. It’s also unclear whether that is the allowed weight for each car, how many would be allowed on the section at any time and if that accounts for two-way traffic.

We have only looked at the displacement of two parallel sections of roadway so far. What about the rest of the structure? Well I think it is quite clear that the explosion was on one side of the support but the darkened surface seems to show that the two sections butting up to those have also been affected.

It may well be that the Russian authorities have been over-enthusiastic in their ability to quickly re-open the bridge. That leaves all the tourists on Crimea with a problem. The ferries were first stopped and now have been reserved for freight traffic only. The tourists are being told to take the long way home.

x /8. Also, Russian sources say that the Kerch ferry crossing operates only for freight transport, cars should move along the land corridor. pic.twitter.com/s8GXvl8waQ — Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 17, 2023

For those having difficulty reading the Cyrillic, the route is to take the E106 off of the Crimean peninsular passing over the bridge near Chonhar on the Crimea/Kherson oblast border, turn right at the ring road surrounding Melitopol and right at the junction with the M14 which takes you along to the coast to pass through Azovski, a suburb of Berdyansk and on to pass through the middle of Mariupol and then into Russia, next stop Rostov-on-Don.

Some of those places have been somewhat notorious for their noisy nightlife caused by those pesky Ukrainians recently. The Chonhar bridge has also received a visit from Mr Storm Shadow although he only broke the road deck and didn’t hit the bridge support with the main bomb. It should make an interesting journey home for those tourists.

Unfortunately there do seem to be an awful lot who have decided to cut short their beach holidays. There are reports of lines of cars of similar length to the convoy attempting to take Kyiv last year. People are advised to take bottled water with them as there are high prices on the route and use of the service station bathroom can cost US$40 (although some say pregnant women are only charged $30, the occupiers are so considerate).

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/17/2181770/-Russian-Plans-To-Reopen-Kerch-Road-Bridge-At-Midnight-Mind-The-Gap

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