Construction crews yesterday morning laid the first pier foundation for the Kinmen Bridge (金門大橋), the National Freeway Bureau said, adding that it is confident that the bridge would be finished by 2021.
The bridge would connect Greater Kinmen (大金門) and Lieyu (烈嶼, also known as Little Kinmen), the two main islands in the county, the bureau said.
It would span a strip of sea whose bed is on average 7m below the surface, it said, adding that in some areas the seabed is about 20m below the surface.
The geological complexity has made it impossible to lay the pier foundations using steel sheet piles, so the construction crews used the steel cofferdam method, the bureau said.
This was the first time the method was used by the bureau to lay a pier foundation, which took two months to complete, it said, adding that it should be able to lay the other pier foundations faster.
The bureau in March laid a foundation pile on granite.
The bureau yesterday explained the challenges of applying the steel cofferdam method.
The crews first installed jacketed steel pipes as a support base before beginning the construction, it said.
They assembled the steel cofferdam on land before lowering it to a designated depth using 12 large hydraulic jacks, the bureau said, adding that divers worked 3m to 9m below the sea surface to install bottom boards for the cofferdam and seal the plates between jacketed steel pipes.
Crews then pumped in concrete to form a 1.5m-thick bedding at the bottom of the cofferdam before pumping out the seawater trapped inside the structure, it said.
The cofferdam had to withstand buoyancy of more than 1,000 tonnes and tidal effects twice per day, the bureau said, adding that the crews installed six jacketed steel pipes and buoyancy-resistant steel piles to reinforce the structure.
Divers were kept on standby during the construction in case seawater leaked into the cofferdam, it said.
The bridge project has been criticized for “only surfacing during elections.”
The Legislative Yuan’s budget center has said in a report that the project had several issues, such as low budget implementation efficiency and construction delays.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
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