Morocco’s new bridge lits up

Relaxnews

To celebrate its title as the longest cable-stayed bridge in Africa, the new Mohammed VI bridge has been adorned with multicolored, variable LED lighting.

A RECORD-BREAKING BRIDGE
The Mohammed VI bridge was inaugurated by its namesake the King of Morocco earlier in July. At 950 meters long and 6 lanes wide, with two 200 meter-tall towers and 160 cables, it is Africa’s longest cable-stayed bridge: a construction where the towers are the primary load-bearing structures which then transfer the weight on the
bridge to the ground. The longest cable-stayed bridges in the world (not counting pipeline bridges) are currently the Russky Bridge in Russia (1104 meters) and the Sutong Bridge in China (1088 meters).

CONSTRUCTORS
The bridge, which connects the capital Rabat with the city of Salé, was constructed by the China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group, who recently also completed the 680-meter-long Kigamboni bridge in Tanzania. Work on the Mohammed VI bridge took five years (2011-2016) for completion.

PHILLIPS LIGHTING
To illuminate the new bridge and celebrate its inauguration, Philips Lighting has dressed it in LED lights running along all the cables and pillars. The architectural lighting effects by Philips Color Kinetics technology give the operators the option of choosing between up to 16 million colors for striking light shows all the way along the bridge. In response to energy-saving concerns, Phillips has stated that “The LED lighting system is anticipated to be up to 75% more energy efficient than conventional lighting systems.”
This is not the first bridge that Philips’ LED lighting systems have lit
up bridges. The London Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridge
in London have all been dressed in lights for various events, as well as
the Bosphorus Bridge in Turkey, the Corpus Christi bridge in Texas and
the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge in Boston.