In this video you can ride along on the E76 Nishiseto Expressway from Omishima island to Imabari, a city on the island of Ehime in Japan. This is a famous expressway in mostly a 1 x 1 alignment that crosses the islands in the Seto inland sea in order to connect Ehime with mainland Japan. This is one of 3 connections, the other 2 are at Okayama and Kobe.
The E76 route through Setonaikai National Park and its islands features many impressive bridges. Some of them are featured in this video, including the biggest of them all: The Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge. Upon completion in 1999, this was the longest suspension bridge structure in the world. The structure is divided in 3 segments, the first, second and third Kurushima Kaikyo bridges. Together the bridge structure has a length of over 4 kilometers. The largest segment is the third Kurushima Kaikyo bridge, with a main span of 1030 meters. The bridge has 4 driving lanes and also a bicycle path. Cycling from mainland Japan to Ehime or vice versa across all the islands in the Seto inland sea is quite popular and do-able in a day.
The bridge thanks its name to the Kurushima strait, which it crosses. The first city across the strait when arriving on Ehime, is Imabari. Imabari seemed to be a rather sleepy port city but does have over 200.000 inhabitants. It has a nice historical castle in its center that I visited.
#e76 #nishiseto #expressway #japan #ehime #kurushima #bridge
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Music in this video:
Buried Desire by dvine
By the River by Digital Camel
CBB by Alex Dovo
Burning Up by Chi Vaug
Campion by Valante
Music provided by the Epidemic Sound
Map courtesy of openstreetmap.de
1 Comment
The bridges are clearly fitted for a 2+2 lane highway to be implemented in the future, yet almost the entire actual highway is 1+1 (with the temporary 1-lane alternate direction part 😅)
Yet the bridges are old enough to need renovation. The future is yet to come.