The General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge is located at the Tablazo Strait outlet of Lake Maracaibo, in western Venezuela. The bridge connects Maracaibo with much of the rest of the country. It is named after General Rafael Urdaneta, a Venezuelan hero of Independence who was born in Maracaibo. It is one of the largest bridges of its kind in the world, the second longest in Latin America after the Rio–Niterói Bridge (13 km), and ranks 80th among the longest bridges in the world.
Design and construction
Made of reinforced and prestressed concrete, the cable-stayed bridge spans from shore to shore. The five main spans are each long. They are supported from tall towers, and provide of clearance to the water below. The bridge carries only vehicles.
The competition to design the bridge started in 1957 and was won by Juan Francisco Otaola Pavan and his partner Oscar Benedetti, Venezuelan civil engineers and owners of Precomprimido C.A., with the design of Riccardo Morandi, an Italian civil engineer. While Morandi designed the bridge, it was Otaola and Benedetti who made the structural and budget calculations, which in part with Otaola's demand for the project to be done by at least 50% of Venezuelan companies and workforce, secured the winning bid for the Venezuelan government. Precomprimido's was the only concrete design out of twelve entries, and was expected to be less expensive to maintain, as well as providing valuable experience of prestressed concrete technology for Venezuela.
In April 1964, parts of the bridge collapsed after a collision with the tanker Esso Maracaibo, causing the deaths of seven people.
The construction of a second cable-stayed bridge has been proposed since 1982, with a series of studies made since 2000. The cost of the new bridge has been estimated at US$440m, to be largely privately financed via tolls.<!-- ref>link no longer works[http://www.comlago.com.ve/proyectos/swf-nuevopuente-en.html]</ref -->
The bridge's structural integrity received heightened concern after the August 2018 collapse of a stayed pier on a similar bridge, Ponte Morandi in Genoa, Italy. Both bridges were designed by Riccardo Morandi.