" Howrah Bridge " in Kolkata

The end of the 17th Century Kolkata witnessed the gradual emergence of the city of Kolkata brought about by the merger of three villages - Kolkata, Sutanati & Gobindapur, on the eastern bank of the river Hooghly, the other name of River 'Ganga'. On the western bank, Howrah came up as a bustling site of commerce.

    The twin cities of Calcutta (re-named as Kolkata in the year 2001), and Howrah , were separated by the River Hooghly, and shared a common historical linkage towards the eventual construction of the Rabindra Setu, more commonly known as Howrah bridge. While Kolkata, from a small sleeping hamlet of artisans and mercantile community eventually developed , as a commercial hub of a modern metropolitan city , Howrah (virtually the store house of raw material resources) became its industrial satellite.

    Kolkata was declared the capital of India by the British and remained so till 1911. The railway station at Howrah set up in the year 1906 and the bridge (later popularly known as Howrah Bridge) thus served as the logistic link with the country's one of the oldest metropolies, Kolkata. The Legislative department of the then Government of Bengal passed the Howrah Bridge Act, in the year 1871, under the Bengal Act IX of 1871.
Sir Bradford Leslie's famous floating pontoon bridge, the earlier avatar of the modern Howrah Bridge, was initially set up   in 1874, almost coinciding with the establishment of the port of Calcutta in 1870 For the convenient plying of passenger and vehicular traffic, the pool was connected as a whole. However, this was unfastened everyday, particularly during the night for safe passage of steamers, boats and other marine vehicles. From 19th August, 1879, the bridge was illuminated by fixing electric poles at the centre.This was done by using the electricity rendered from the dynamo at the Mallick GhatPumping Station. The Bridge was then 1528 ft. long and 62 ft. wide. On both sideswere pavements 7 ft. wide for the sake of pedestrians. The 48 ft. road in between,was for plying of traffic."

 The emergence of Kolkata as the political capital of the nation and expanding volume of merchandise routed through the port of Kolkata had a synergistic effect on the commercial importance of the bridge.  The location of the initial pontoon bridge, was around 100 yards down-stream of the present Howrah Bridge (renamed as Rabindra Setu in the year 1965) after Rabindranath Tagore, the philosopher - bard and one of the most important nineteenth century renaissance personalities to leave a lasting impression on modern India.  The Early Initiatives
    The newly appointed Port Commissioners in 1871 were also appointed Bridge Commissioners and were enjoined to take charge of the structure . The Commissioners took over the management of the Howrah Bridge in February, 1875. Since the early part of the 20th Century, the bridge showed signs of duress for catering to the increased traffic load. The Commissioners of Port of Calcutta instituted a Committee under the convenorship of Mr. John Scott, the then Chief Engineer of the Port. The other members included Mr. R.S. Highet, Chief Engineer, East Indian Railway and Mr. W.B. MacCabe Chief Engineer, Calcutta Corporation.
 The telling observations made by the Committee make a fascinating reading even today. The committee observed that "bullock carts formed the eight - thirteenths of the vehicular traffic (as observed on 27th of August 1906, the heaviest day's traffic observed in the port of Commissioners" 16 day's Census of the vehicular traffic across the existing bridge). The road way on the existing bridge is 48 feet wide except at the shore spans where it is only 43 feet in road ways, each 21 feet 6 inches wide. The roadway on the new bridge would be wide enough to take at least two lines of vehicular traffic and one line of trams in each direction and two roadways each 30 feet wide, giving a total width of 60 feet of road way which are quite sufficient for this purpose.................... The traffic across the existing floating bridge Calcutta & Howrah is very heavy and it is obvious if the new bridge is to be on the same site as the existing bridge, then unless a temporary bridge is provided, there will be serious interruptions to the traffic while existing bridge is being moved to one side to allow the new bridge to be erected on the same site as the present bridge".




Howrah Bridge – The Bridge without Nuts & Bolts!

How about visiting a vintage bridge which has no nuts & bolts in its construction but still standing tall for the last 66 years? Hard to believe? The Bridge in concern - one of the busiest in the world - is located at Howrah in West Bengal. The Howrah bridge, the sixth longest of its type, has been an emblem of the city of Kolkata from its inception. So much so that the world knows Kolkata by its trams, the Victoria Memorial, and of course the Howrah Bridge. Opened to traffic in 1943, the construction of the bridge was started in 1937. The bridge has remained one of the most renowned landmarks of Kolkata. More than 150,000 vehicles and 4,000,000 pedestrians cross over the bridge every day. Technically speaking, Howrah Bridge is a "Cantilever Truss" bridge, constructed entirely by riveting, without nuts or bolts!

The present bridge, initially named the “New Howrah Bridge” was built between 1937 and 1943. On June 14, 1965 it was rechristened to Rabindra Setu, after the first Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. The bridge is exposed to traffic 24 hours a day except for Inter- State transport buses, goods vehicles, and All India Tourist buses. At night, only three wheelers and goods vehicles are allowed to pass. To monitor deck level traffic and the same along the river, CCTV is being used.
A Cantilever bridge is a type of bridge constructed using cantilevers only. Cantilevers are constructions that protrude horizontally into space, secured on one end of the structure! In case of small footbridges the technique is quite simple however, for huge bridges the volume of work is enormous. Steel truss cantilever (STC) was one of the newer technologies in the 1930s which was used in building Howrah Bridge. The advantage of STC was the lack of complexity in designing and implementation that included little or no falsework. Falsework, in layman’s term, is the temporary construction, provided externally to a structure, till the time it needs no extraneous support to stand on its own architecture. For lovers of vintage architecture, the finest example of the above mentioned architecture lies en route Kolkata.
If you are touring Kolkata, then the Howrah Bridge over the river Hooghly is the first link to this city, as you approach it by train. There are two more bridges connecting the city of Howrah and Kolkata – Vidyasagar Setu and Vivekananda Setu. The gigantic railway station in Howrah is one of the biggest stations in the world. The railway terminal caters to both intra-state and inter-state trains. For travellers a must-see place to visit is the Botanical Garden in Shibpur, the largest of its kind in the country. You can also spend some time in “The Bengal Engineering College” at Shibpur, one of the oldest technical Institutes in the country. If you want a place to de-stress yourself, then visit the “Belur Math”, headquarter of Ramakrishna Mission. The serenity of the place lets you forget all your torments and tensions.

Notable features of the Howrah Bridge:
 
   
705 meters in length, 97 feet in width, 82 meters in height
   
26,500 plus mega tonne of high-tensile steel was used
   
Suspension type Balanced Cantilever
   
325 ft, length of each anchor arm
   
468 ft, length of each Cantilever arm
   
564 ft, suspended span
   
Deck width 71 ft, footpath 15 feet on either side
   
No nuts & bolts
   
Total 8 articulation joints, 3 at each of the cantilever arms, and 2 in the suspended portions
   
Carriageway Minimum headroom is 5.8 m
   
River traffic freeboard is 8.8 m
   
Ranks sixth in World’s top 10 longest Cantilever bridges