General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge

The General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge, also locally called Bridge over the Lake, is a bridge that crosses the narrowest part of Lake Maracaibo, in Zulia, in northwestern Venezuela, and connects the city of Maracaibo with the rest of the country. It was named in honor of General Rafael Urdaneta, a Zulian hero of Venezuelan independence. It is one of the largest in the world of its kind, the second longest in Latin America, only after the Rio-Niterói Bridge in Brazil and ranks 65th of the longest in the world.

Designed by the Italian engineer Riccardo Morandi and later modified by the Maracaibo Bridge Consortium "CPM" (Precomprimido CA 50% share and leader, Wayss & Freytag AG and Julius Berger, Phillip Holtzman AG the other 50%), was built in reinforced concrete and prestressed, and has a length of 8678 m and 134 pillars. In its central part the bridge is of the cable-stayed type; its bases are anchored in the bottom of the lake of Maracaibo, at a depth of 60 meters (it allows boats up to 45 m high to pass underneath and has a light of 235 m) and has two lanes in each direction. It supports an average traffic of 45 thousand vehicles per day. On this bridge is the largest monument of lights in Latin America and the third in the world.

This bridge made it possible to connect both sides of the lake and connect the city of Maracaibo in an expeditious manner with the rest of Venezuela. The initial projects for the bridge were discarded because it was considered that a metal structure would require a lot of maintenance, given the humid climate of the area. In addition to requiring little maintenance, in Venezuela cement is a less expensive material than steel and would maintain the aesthetic requirements of the work.

According to the official publication of the Ministry of Public Works (MOP) 1962 and the book The Bridge on Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela Bauverlag GmbH, Wiesbaden-Berlin (1962), 270 thousand m³ of concrete, 35,660 m of concrete were used in its construction. drilling piles, 27 170 m of driving piles of d = 91.4 cm, 6260 m of pile driving piles 50/50 cm, 5000 t of prestressing cables and 19 000 t of rebar. 2600 people participated.