Since June 1995, The Rio-Niterói Bridge has be administrated by the CCR Ponte concessionaire. It was the first time, in Brazil, that a concession was granted to private enterprise for a large highway structure. the contract is for 20 years.
The concessionaire has already invested over R$ 260 million in an extensive recovery, maintenance and operational program for the Bridge. It implemented the most modern technologies and equipment, operational resources, and traffic control, and placed the Rio-Niterói Bridge among the best and safest highway systems in the Nation.
The President Costa e Silva Bridge, better-known as the Rio-Niterói Bridge, was inaugurated on March 4, 1974, and is a national engineering landmark, because of its dimensions, bold design, and the creativity of the processes for executing the work. This is a mega construction: it is the biggest bridge in the southern hemisphere; the longest span in the world with a continuous straight beam – the central span is 300 meters long; the biggest restressed structure in the Americas – over 2,000 kilometers of cables in its inner structure. It is the seventh longest bridge in the world, but experts insist that it is still the biggest, in terms of spatial volume, because of its gigantic pillars and the caissons sunk into rock, over 60 meters below the water level. Above all, it highlights the setting for Guanabara Bay.
The Rio-Niterói Bridge is 13 kilometers long and has 10 kilometers of access ramps. When it was inaugurated, the expectation was that traffic volume would reach 50,000 vehicles per day, but the Bridge sped up the region’s growth and that projection was soon surpassed. Currently, there are over 150,000 vehicles per day and 170,000 on the eve of holidays and during mid-summer.
