10 Of The Biggest Bridges Ever Built, Ranked By Length

Many famous engineers have constructed epic bridges, from ones that appear to defy gravity to feats of engineering that can survive earthquakes or worse. Not all of them are indestructible, but bridges are also much more than a method of getting from point A to point B. That said, you could argue that the longest are the most impressive.

Whether it's over water or land, the longest bridges on the planet are awe-inspiring, and even nerve-wracking when it comes time to cross them. Bridges do collapse sometimes despite engineers' efforts, especially when nature comes into play.

Yet interestingly, preventing bridge collapses doesn't mean sticking to smaller or shorter bridges, which the longest ones in the world have proved. We found out that there are at least 10 bridges all around the world that are over 20 miles long, and some of them are as long as five times that length.

Here are 10 of the biggest bridges ever built, ranked by length.

Building bridges over water can be complicated, but it's not impossible, as the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway proves. In fact, this bridge was built directly over the top of Lake Pontchartrain to connect the greater New Orleans region. Instead of driving all the way around the lake, you can drive directly across it.

The distance across the lake makes the Pontchartrain Causeway the longest bridge in the United States. It's also the longest bridge built over water in the world. Its assembly involved thousands of spans, or decks, over the water. The southbound lanes were completed in 1956 and the northbound lanes opened in 1969. The bridge's construction involved tons of concrete, with over 9,000 cast concrete piles supporting the spans.

On average, the bridge has about a 10-foot clearance over the water below, and there are drawbridges that open up so boats can pass under with about 45 feet of clearance. Sadly, at least 11 people died after driving their vehicles off the bridge, which led to the addition of railings as well as shoulders for drivers to pull onto if they need to exit the bridge.

Although you should always drive carefully and pay close attention any time you're operating a car, extra care is a good idea while driving on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. Before you drive across this bridge, consider learning how to escape from a sinking vehicle, just in case!

The Philippines has some of the most iconic methods of transportation in the world, like the famous jeepney, but it also has a lot of traffic. One way the country combats congestion is by creating unique road systems, such as the Metro Manila Skyway System. The Skyway System spans over 24 miles and allows for travel between Buendia, Makati City and Balintawak, Quezon City.

The Skyway is broken into multiple sections — five of them, actually — so this might not look like a traditional suspension bridge like we're familiar with in the United States. It's also a massive endeavor that cost the Philippines about $1 billion (USD), with additional costs added after the original estimate.

Unlike some of the other biggest bridges ever built, the Metro Manila Skyway doesn't run over water. Instead, it travels around the city, adding an alternate road route for drivers and passengers. It is, of course, still an impressive feat of engineering, especially because the route is built atop existing roads. The project is also said to have doubled Manila's road capacity to 300,000 vehicles per day.

If you plan to travel along the Metro Manila Skyway, be prepared to pay tolls along the way — although the trip should be quick and relatively fast-moving for most of the journey.

Although people in China own far fewer vehicles per capita than people in the United States, there are many more people and a need for roadways and bridges all around the country. China also has amazing cars that are not sold anywhere else. However, much of the country's transportation is via high-speed train.

Thus, China is next on the list of biggest bridges ever built, with the Beijing Grand Bridge, which spans nearly 30 miles. The unique bridge is the route for the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train, which some say is the fastest in the world at a top speed of 217 miles per hour.

The Beijing Grand Bridge opened in 2011 and is made up of various sections, each with its own name. For example, the part of the bridge that runs between Langfang and Qingxian is the Tianjin Grand Bridge. Other parts of the high-speed railway have different names, and as you'll see later on our list of the biggest bridges ever built, some parts are much longer than others.

Beijing Grand Bridge is also technically a viaduct — a bridge with numerous spans — and in some places, it crosses over water. In others, it crosses over land, both in cities and across the countryside. All told, the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train traverses 819 miles, and most of those miles are along various bridges.

Thailand is another country with one of the biggest bridges ever built. Its Bang Na Expressway (official name: Burapha Withi Expressway) spans 34 miles and was once named the world's longest bridge (including by Guinness World Records). The bridge, which opened in 2000, cost $1 billion (according to early reports) and was one of the largest precasting operations ever. The bridge project intended to support commercial development in southern Thailand, and the elevated expressway definitely created a new and unique travel route.

Interestingly, the planned speed limit was only 50 miles per hour, which might surprise Americans (and Germans, too). The bridge was assembled in pieces, with the precast segment plan also employing cast-in-place elements at first until the builders realized bringing pieces in rather than casting them on-site would be easier. The bridge's pieced-together style also makes it a viaduct.

In all, the project took 2.4 million cubic yards of concrete to complete. Not only that, but before the construction workers behind the project began work on the bridge, they had to pour an entire concrete staging area where precasting and supply storage took place.

Today, Bang Na Expressway is six lanes wide and has two toll plazas where the lanes split into 12. Although many other bridges have since beaten the Expressway's record for the world's longest, it did keep the title for about 10 years, until 2010.

China is home to a variety of unusual transportation methods, like motorized sanlunche taxis, but with so many motor-driven vehicles, there is a clear need for lots of road routes. To that end, the Weinan Weihe Grand Bridge was a useful addition to China's infrastructure when it opened in 2008.

Weinan Weihe Grand Bridge is part of the Zhengzhou–Xi'an High Speed Railway, and it connects the two cities with a route that was shortened to about two to three hours. Trains travel at speeds of up to 186 miles per hour along the route, which crosses over various rivers, highways, and railways. The bridge even crosses the Wei River two times.

For a time, the Weinan Weihe Grand Bridge was the longest in the world, but it later dropped a few places as other bridges sprang up. Still, the bridge was an impressive feat of engineering; it required 10,000 workers to complete, plus over 3 million cubic yards of concrete and thousands of tons of steel.

Like other bridges around this length, the Weinan Weihe Grand Bridge is also a viaduct, though not much information is available about its methods of construction. However, this is one bridge that is thrilling to see as it crosses over the landscape at varying heights.

While a few sources claim that the Cangde Grand Bridge is the fourth-longest in the world, it's tough to track down a direct source for that information. That said, sites like BBC's Science Focus suggest that the Cangde Grand Bridge, which runs between Beijing and Shanghai, is one of the longest in the world.

Cangde Grand Bridge is said to be over 65 miles long, and it's part of the Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway, just like the Beijing Grand Bridge. What's unique about this part of the Railway is that Cangde Grand Bridge is said to have been built to withstand seismic activity using a pile foundation. With over 3,000 piers, the bridge involved some intense engineering.

The bridge was completed in 2010, and in 2014, researchers released a study theorizing how the bridge pile foundation would settle over time. So far, it seems to be holding up just fine, despite many earthquakes since it opened.

Like other massive bridges around the world, there isn't a ton of information available about Cangde Grand Bridge, although the Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway is very well-known. The Railway is said to be one of the busiest high-speed rails in the world, with millions of passengers transported each year. In 2023, for example, the railway transported 53 million people, a sharp increase from 2022.

China operates some of the fastest high-speed rail trains in the world today, and its bridges are an important part of getting those trains where they need to be, as we've already seen with some other exceedingly long bridges. Like the others on this list, the Tianjin Grand Bridge is a railway viaduct that's part of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway.

Tianjin Grand Bridge opened in 2011 and runs between Langfang and Qingxian. At the time of its construction, Tianjin Grand Bridge was labeled the second longest in the world. Since then, it has been dethroned, but the bridge is still impressive.

The construction of Tianjin Grand Bridge involved box girders that weighed hundreds of tons, and this section of the Railway crossed over land and water. Given how varied the terrain is that the bridge passes over, in some places, the railway is far off the ground, while in others, it's quite a bit lower.

It's said that the bridge's construction involved a massive crane to put the pieces in place, assembling 32 individual sections to create the 70.6-mile-long bridge. The viaduct allows trains to pass over highly populated areas and travel faster than drivers could in vehicles on the roadway.

With so many exceedingly long bridges built in China, it's no surprise that the country makes the list of the biggest-ever bridges multiple times. However, a few other countries have a spot on the list, including ones you wouldn't necessarily expect — like Japan. It turns out Japan's Kita–Yaita Viaduct stretches 71 miles between the cities of Kita and Yaita.

Like China's many viaduct bridges, Kita–Yaita Viaduct is part of a railway system, the Tohoku Shinkansen high-speed rail line. Like other bridges in Asia, there isn't a ton of information online about the Kita–Yaita Viaduct, but various sources suggest that at least part of it was built in 1982 when the Tohoku Shinkansen rail line opened.

Looking at photos of the viaduct bridge, it's not surprising that it has been around for so long, but it's also impressive. In some places, the bridge stretches high over the landscape, and you probably wouldn't even guess that the photos were taken in Japan.

That said, it's clear that the railway has been maintained well. Some photos of Tohoku Shinkansen illustrate the efforts undertaken to bolster the railway against earthquake activity. Given that the Tohoku Shinkansen rail line spans 420 miles in all, that's a lot of reinforcement work — and a lot of concrete!

Another viaduct bridge may be the second-longest bridge in the world, and this one is in Taiwan. Changhua–Kaohsiung Viaduct was completed in 2007 and, again, is part of a high-speed rail network. At 97.8 miles long, this section of the Taiwan High Speed Rail system connects Zouying, Kao-hsiung to Baguashan, Chang-hua.

Because this part of Taiwan is highly susceptible to earthquakes, the bridge sections were built specifically to withstand seismic activity, according to Britannica. In fact, at least one study determined that despite being over the top of an active fault (the Tuntzuchiao fault), the Taiwan High Speed Rail was well-equipped to handle earthquakes.

The construction of the entire high-speed rail — not just Changhua–Kaohsiung Viaduct — included box girder bridges that were precast, bridges constructed on-site with free cantilevers, some on-site pieces with shorting systems, steel truss bridges, composite bridges, and more.

In addition to the Tuntzuchiao fault, there is also a fault named Changhua, suggesting that that part of the bridge was purposely constructed over an active seismic area as it was the best way to transport high-speed rail passengers. The entirety of the bridge might not be beautiful, but it is sensible and, apparently, strong.

Currently, the longest bridge in the world appears to be the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge in China. You might not be surprised to hear that this bridge, too, is part of the Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway. This part of the project cost around $8.5 billion, according to Britannica, with Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge opening in 2011.

The bridge's surface lies at around 328 feet above the ground throughout its route, and most of that path takes the bridge over rice paddies and wetlands. In addition, Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge runs along the Yangtze River for most of its 102.4 miles.

Currently, Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge is the Guinness World Records' longest bridge in the world. The record was established in June 2011, with Guinness World Records noting that the bridge also passes over the Langfang-Qingxian viaduct — aka the Tianjin Grand Bridge, which it calls the second-longest bridge in the world. It's unclear when Guinness last updated its record because our research suggests that Tianjin isn't the second longest, but there's another factor to consider here.

There is no standardized system for measuring the length of bridges, and as you can see from the list of the biggest ones ever built, most of them are viaducts. By nature, a viaduct is a multipart bridge (and usually reinforced concrete), so not the kind we think of when picturing U.S. cities like San Francisco and their bridges. Still, a hundred-mile-long feat of engineering is impressive, both to look at and to travel on.