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Torun has a new bridge! The historic investment project  for the city, which has been long awaited by the citizens of Toruń and drivers passing through the city of Copernicus, has been completed. On December 9th, 2013, after three years of construction, the bridge is open.

The new crossing of the Vistula River in Toruń together with the entire system of flyovers, tunnels and access roads is one of the largest road investments in Poland. The project was co-financed by the European Union from the Cohesion Fund under the Infrastructure and Environment Programme 2007-2013.

The bridge in Torun is 540 m long, and together with the access roads – 4100 m. It consists of 2 huge arched spans – each 270 m long, 50 m high, weighing about 2700 tons. These are the longest arched spans in Poland.

The technology used in Toruń to assemble the arches of the bridge is unique in the world. The steel arches were assembled from smaller fragments on land, and then transported by water on platforms pulled by tugboats and embedded on two river bank pillars and the central pillar, erected  on an artificial island in the Vistula River. This operation, controlled by computer, required appropriate water and weather conditions and great precision in matching the elements. After reaching the pillars, the spans were lifted to the right height with the use of hydraulic cylinders and set on concrete headers. The first one was placed in March, the second one in May 2013. Then the steel plate of the bridge platform was suspended from the embedded arches and the finishing works started.

Apart from the bridge itself, a network of access roads was built, a modern, three-level road junction at Daszyńskiego Square, a 300-meter tunnel with retaining walls along Wschodnia Street, a 300-meter flyover over Żółkiewskiego and Szosa Lubicka streets and 600-meter flyovers over floodplains on the right bank of the Vistula river. On the left bank there are 830 m of flyovers, an overpass over the railroad line, intersections with Rypińska and Lipnowska streets, including an underground passage in Rypińska street, a network of access roads and a roundabout in Łódzka street. On both sides of the Vistula there were also pedestrian and bicycle routes and bus stop bays. The project was carried out in harmony with the natural environment.

The new crossing will be the fourth existing bridge connecting the banks of the Vistula River in Torun and its surroundings. The first one is a railroad bridge named after Ernest Malinowski, built between 1870 and 1873, the second is the main road crossing through the city so far – the Józef Piłsudski Bridge, opened in 1934, and the third one – the Armia Krajowa highway bridge, 11 km away from the center of Toruń, whose construction was completed in 2011 along with the section of the A1 motorway near Toruń. The General Elżbieta Zawacka bridge will therefore be the second road bridge within the city limits.

For many years the construction of the new bridge had been the most important investment postulate of the residents as a result of increased transit traffic and the rapid growth in the number of vehicles in Toruń (from 85 to 118 thousand in 2002-2012). Traffic jams forming in the city center on the street leading to the only road bridge posed a threat to traffic safety, hindered the operation of emergency services and degraded the historic Old Town, which is on the UNESCO list. The new crossing will definitely improve road traffic in Toruń and divert some of it to the eastern part of the city, inhabited by more than one third of Toruń residents.