It’s become a symbol of the region. The Pont de Normandie is a steel and concrete giant spanning the Seine estuary between Honfleur and Le Havre. It’s a sight for sore eyes that has made life easier for the region and its residents. It was built between 1988 and 1995 in a feat of engineering that changed Normandy forever.
There’s nothing ordinary about it. The figures for Pont de Normandie are extraordinary. The 819m main deck and 184 cable stays make it one of the ten longest cable-stayed bridges in the world. It’s like a tightrope 50m above the Seine, giving anyone driving, walking or cycling along the bridge a sight for sore eyes with its views of the estuary. Whilst that’s all happening on the bridge, ships sail peacefully up to Rouen underneath it.
A big bridge with big ambitions
The Pont de Normandie may be big, but so were its ambitions. When the project launched in the 1970s, its supporters (CCI, Normandy Region, Calvados, Seine-Maritime and Eure départements) wanted to open up Le Havre port, streamline traffic between both banks of the Seine and reduce traffic on existing routes. At the time, you had to take a ferry or travel an extra 30km to Pont de Tancarville bridge if you wanted to get from Le Havre to Honfleur. It took an hour to get from one city to the other, despite them only being a dozen kilometres apart as the crow flies.
Innovations galore
The bridge’s design in itself was a real challenge; its construction was a feat. When the engineers first put pen to paper, the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world had a main span of 465m (Alex Fraser Bridge, Vancouver). The Pont de Normandie is twice that. The bridge also had to work with and withstand the natural environment: tides, strong winds, sea water, wetlands and more. They came up with game-changing systems to cover every base: moulded deck and inverted-y pylons to withstand the wind, spiral tubes around the cables to stop them vibrating in the rain etc.
Technical feat
During construction between 1988 and 1995, unheard-of technical solutions were used to build the bridge, at all costs. The pylons were made from high-performance concrete that had never been used before: three times stronger than regular concrete to withstand sea water. A pioneering ramming system helped build the viaducts on both banks of the Seine. The 32 sections (19m long, each weighing 180 tons) of the metallic deck were assembled one at a time above the drop, using a hoist crane to meet in the middle… Work that involved the utmost precision.
A major route
After 7 years of work, the Pont de Normandie was complete. It was inaugurated by the French Prime Minister, Edouard Balladur, on January 20th 1995 and it opened to traffic. It halves the time it takes to travel between Honfleur and Le Havre.
The Pont de Normandie has become a major route in the space of 30 years: 7 million vehicles cross the bridge every year. It hooks up with the A29 and bridges both banks of the Seine to connect Western and Northern France, Southern and Northern Europe…
The bridge has also boosted the local and regional economy, attracting tourists from all over the world who want to see a feat of engineering which, far ahead of its time, reunified Normandy*… The concrete and steel giant is now integral to the region’s identity.
* Haute-Normandie and Basse-Normandie were reunited 20 years later, in 2015.
Innovations normandes
Thematics
