Betancourt Bridge

Betancourt Bridge (Russian: Мост Бетанку́ра, Most Betankura) is a non-bascule 6-lane bridge with a cycle path in Saint Petersburg that opened in 2018. The bridge crosses the Little Neva and the Zhdanovka rivers, passing Petrovsky and Sernyy island [ru], and connects the Vasilyevsky and Petrogradsky islands.^[1] The bridge is part of the Centre Transport Bypass (CTB) [ru], it allows non-stop traffic from Pulkovo Airport to the Krestovsky Stadium. First ideas to construct a bridge across appeared as early as in the 1980s. Since that time the design was changed significantly, instead of the straight lay the bridge became S-shaped in order to avoid the ‘Almaz’ military shipyard that was located on the bank of the Little Neva. However, the production was closed before the actual construction of the bridge even started.

It is named in honor of Agustín de Betancourt, a prominent engineer of Spanish origin, who worked on many architectural structures in Saint Petersburg.^[2][3]

The construction of the Betancourt bridge was followed by a series of city-planning scandals; several historical residential buildings were demolished under forged documents and fraudulent commissions.

The bridge was opened to traffic on May 13, 2018, however the works were still in process. The official commissioning permit of Rostechnadzor was issued only on March 26, 2019.

The project of the Betancourt bridge received several architectural awards for innovative design and technologies. However, critics point out its winding S-shaped route fails to comply with city roads safety regulations, the turns to road interchanges are very sharp. 6 lanes of the bridge stuck into 3-4 laned city streets provoking bottleneck traffic jams.