Most over the Great Belt is still one of the longest of its kind

Copenhagen/Prague – The bridge over the Great Belt, which was opened on June 14, 1998, has caused almost revolutionary changes in transportation in Denmark. The eighteen-kilometer-long structure offering both road and rail connections between the islands of Zealand and Funen soon became the most significant transport artery in the country. At the time of its opening, the bridge was the longest suspension bridge in Europe with a span of 1.6 kilometers and the second-longest of its kind in the world. Today, it ranks sixth.

The modern bridge structure consists of three parts – a high bridge, a low bridge, and a tunnel. Previously, traveling from mainland Denmark to Zealand by car or rail ferries took 75 minutes, but after the bridge opened, drivers traveling at a speed of 110 kilometers per hour can cover the same distance in just ten minutes. The downside of the crossing has been the fact that hundreds of employees in the Danish ferry service lost their jobs.

The first rail ferries began operating on this route in 1883, and 50 years later, shuttle ferry services across the Great Belt were also used by cars. Construction of the bridge began in 1988, taking four years longer than originally planned, and the costs reached double the estimated amount. Today, it is the second-longest of its kind in Europe, after the bridge over the Dardanelles, which opened last year and is the longest in the world at 2023 meters.