Viaduct de Millau

Structural statistics

• 17 December 2004 : Opening of bridge to traffic
  (15 December 2004 : Inauguration)
• 10 October 2001 : Construction work started
• 343 m : Height at top of pylons
• 270 m : Height of roadway over the Tarn
• 2,460 m : Total length of roadway
• 8 spans resting on 7 piers
  • span widths: 204 m between abutments and first and last piers
  • 342 m spans between remaining piers
• 2230 tonnes : Weight of each of the 16 sections of road-deck. Each section is built up from 60 tonne deck-units, each 4 m wide by 17 m long. The deck-units are built in Eiffel’s factories at Lauterbourg and Fos-sur-Mer.
• Heights of the 7 piers :
  P1 : 94,50 m
  P2 : 244,96 m
  P3 : 221,05 m
  P4 : 144,21 m
  P5 : 136,42 m
  P6 : 111,94 m
  P7 : 77,56 m
• 97 m : Height of the 7 pylons
  each pylon is in the form of an inverted Y. The height of the legs of each Y is 38m.
• 154 : Number of stays supporting the road-deck from the pylons
• 36,000 tonnes : Total weight of roadbed’s steel structure
  (5 times that of the Eiffel tower)
• 19,000 tonnes : Steel used for reinforcing the concrete piers
• 5,000 tonnes : Steel used for the stays and cables
• Type of deck : steel orthotropic (orthogonally anisotropic)
• 4.20 m : Thickness of steel road-deck
• 32.05 m : Width of road-deck
• 205,000 tonnes : Concrete
• 85,000 m3 : Total volume of concrete
• 3% (approximately) : Slope (for safety, to enable better visibility)
• 9,000 tonnes : Road tarmac - specially flexible bitumen laid to 6 cm thickness
• 4,000 tonnes : Standard bitumen for the emergency strips on either side
• 520 workers
• 300 million euro : Cost. The cost has finished at half the anticipated estimate.
  (plus 20 million euro for the toll station 6 km from the bridge’s North end).
• 120 years : Predicted lifespan
• Architect: Norman Foster
• Constructor: Eiffage Group. Their website has a number of short web films on the bridge as construction progresses and an animation of the bridge in use. (Note: commentaries in French.)
• Paris-Clermont-Ferrand-Béziers : The Viaduc de Millau will complete this north-south motorway through the heart of France, crossing the Massif Central.
• Tolls - 4.60 euro: off-season, 6.50 euro: during July and August; both charges for light vehicles. Lorries: 20 euro throughout the year. The rest of the 340 km A75 autoroute is free.
• Constructed for the A75 motorway (autoroute) - the Méridienne. The weblink provided is to the English version of the motorway company’s “complete file”, which details the original planning for the route taken and for the final choice of bridge structure (includes maps, photos and diagrams).