The 628-meter-high building has already become a new business card of Chernigov and is of great importance for the recovery and development of the region. This is the shortest way from the Kyiv highway directly to the city center. The movement was first launched back in May. From now on, both lanes of the bridge are open - two lanes in each direction.
Before starting construction, we provided a temporary passage by restoring the old bridge destroyed by the Russians in March 2022 during the siege of Chernigov. To do this, the bottom of the Desna was cleared of debris - 400-ton pieces of metal structures were lifted from the water. Pyrotechnics blew them up under water. Divers cut these silted structures at a depth of 11 meters. We even designed a special traction device to get the debris out of the river that cannot be pulled out in any other way.
In just 5 months, the engineers of the "Autostrada" design institute developed the project of the new bridge. Its construction lasted almost 2 years - according to the DESIGN&BUILD system, which allows designers and builders to work in parallel. These are extremely short terms. Usually, only the design of such objects lasts 2 years!
The bridge complex on Desna combined all road and bridge construction technologies. To ensure the level of navigation, water height and all geometric parameters, the longest 106-meter span over the river bed was made of metal without supports in the water. The beams for this run were made from the last pre-war batch of metal from the legendary Mariupol "Azovstal".
The spans of the bridge over the banks are made of monolithic reinforced concrete. When constructing these spans, we used post-stressed concrete structures. Since this bridge has a unique shape - with bends and extensions - this technology made it possible to implement complex architectural solutions. Post-tensioned construction is lighter, stronger, more durable and more aesthetic.
Engineers thought through every detail of this bridge. They made it comfortable for everyone. Local residents can leave in any direction thanks to interchanges on both sides of the bridge, use the underpass, bike lanes and passages for people with reduced mobility. Residential buildings near the bridge are protected by noise barriers. Decorative glass panels depicting historical monuments of Chernihiv are installed on the lighting masts.
The bridge complex is equipped with a monitoring system that monitors the condition of structural elements during traffic loading, and a weather station that records and displays the temperature of the road surface, weather indicators, traffic accident notifications, traffic restrictions, etc. on the scoreboard.
To implement this object, Autostrada specialists worked around the clock - in two shifts of 1,000 people each. Hundreds of units of own equipment were involved: drilling rigs, piling machines, watercraft. In particular, a unique gantry crane with a height of 24 m and a load capacity of 100 tons was assembled. We have never stopped work, even in the absence of funding and the biggest flood on the Desna in the last 130 years, when the river flooded the entire construction site and it was possible to work only with watercraft.
On October 17, 2023, the Desna bridge complex was entered into the Book of Records of Ukraine. Autostrada bridge builders concreted the longest continuous monolithic span structure with a length of 122.493 m. This process lasted continuously for almost 2 days.
Before starting traffic, the bridge complex successfully passed special tests that confirmed the accuracy of the calculated parameters.
The service life of the new bridge is at least 100 years!