The Amazon River is the world’s second longest river and one of the planet’s most important waterways. Besides having more water by volume than any other river, it is home to the largest river dolphins, more than 100 species of electric fish and close to 60 species of piranhas.
However, despite all these impressive features, there is no bridge over the Amazon River.
Considering that the Amazon passes through three countries (Peru, Colombia, and Brazil) and has 30 million people living in its basin, according to the World Wildlife Foundation, it may sound strange that there are no bridges across the river. Compared to the world’s other famous rivers, this is certainly an anomaly. For example, only the city of Cairo has 9 bridges that cross the Nile. More than 100 bridges have been built over the Yangtze, Asia’s largest river, in the last 30 years alone. There are 133 bridges over Europe’s Danube river, which is only one-third the length of the Amazon.
Why are there no bridges over the Amazon River?
“There is not enough urgent need for a bridge over the Amazon,” said Walter Kaufmann, head of Structural Engineering (Concrete Structures and Bridge Design) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich.
Most of the 6,920 kilometers of the Amazon runs through low-population areas, so there are very few major road lines to be bridged. In cities and towns bordering the river, ships and ferries are used to transfer people and goods from one shore to the other. So while building a bridge has the potential to speed up transport, it’s not entirely necessary.
However, as Kaufmann points out, there are also technical and logistical problems. For example, extensive marshes and soft soil mean that very long access viaducts and very deep foundations are needed. Although these issues are not exclusive to Amazon, they appear much more prominently and severely here. Although it is normally possible to deal with these problems, it requires a significant investment. In addition, some of the standard solutions cannot be used due to seasonal changes in the Amazon River. The width of the Amazon averages between 3.2 and 9.7 kilometers in the dry season (between June and November), while in the wet season (between December and April) it can reach up to 48 kilometers and the water depth can vary by 15 meters.
However, while there is currently no bridge over the Amazon, there is one over its main tributary, the Negro River. The bridge, called Ponte Rio Negre, was completed in 2011 and was the first and only major bridge to connect an Amazon branch while connecting Manaus and Iranduba.
Also in 2019, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro stated that he wanted a bridge to be built over the Amazon as part of the “Rio Branco Project”, but no progress has been made yet.
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