The Queen Eliz­a­beth II Bridge, The Dartford - Thurrock River Crossing

The total length of the bridge, includ­ing the approach viaducts, is 2,872 metres.
145,000 cubic metres of rein­forced con­crete were used in the bridge sub­struc­ture and approach viaducts.
The main span is 450 metres, with the road deck 65 metres above the river pro­vid­ing at least 57.5 metres clear­ance over the width of the nav­i­ga­tional channel.
It took three years to build the new bridge and many chal­lenges and obsta­cles had to be faced along the way, such as co-ordinating the work around chang­ing water lev­els and the river traf­fic of a busy tidal waterway.
The new bridge at Dart­ford was named The Queen Eliz­a­beth II Bridge and was offi­cially opened by Her Majesty in Octo­ber 1991.
Beneath the water­line, the bridge rests on two rein­forced con­crete foun­da­tions of enor­mous phys­i­cal bulk and mass, each the eDartfordcrossing4quiv­a­lent in vol­ume of 400 double-decker buses and weigh­ing a total of 85,000 tonnes. These struc­tures, which are called cais­sons, were con­structed at a dry dock in Hol­land and towed across the North Sea by tugs on a 150-mile jour­ney to the River Thames. Here they were sunk into posi­tion on either side of the nav­i­ga­tion chan­nel. On these sit slen­der con­crete piers, 53 metres in height, which meet the under­side of the steel pylons just below road deck level.
Traf­fic trav­els across the bridge on a four-lane car­riage­way, reach­ing 65 metres above the river at its high­est point between the two main piers. The 450 metre main span is flanked by two 181 metre long back spans which extend to the river­banks, which are in turn flanked by 1-kilometre approach viaducts on either bank. These link the high level road­way over the river directly to the road sys­tem on the north side, and the toll col­lec­tion plaza and the road sys­tem on the south side. The total length is 2.9 kilo­me­tres long.