"American" bridges - a group of 5 railway bridges across the Obvodny Canal on the Moscow direction of the Oktyabrskaya Railway (OZhD). The first bridges were built in the 1840s as part of the construction of the Nikolaev railway (now OZhD). They received the name "American" for their design.
In the 2000s, Lengiprotrans developed a project for the reconstruction of railway bridges, as well as the roadway of the South and North embankments of the Obvodny Canal. The old bridges did not meet modern requirements and created restrictions on the capacity of the canal embankments for road traffic. The aim of the project was to create a freight highway bypassing the city center along the embankments of the Obvodny Canal in accordance with the General Development Plan of St. Petersburg.
After the modernization, the design and architectural solution of all 5 bridges became the same:
• the channel bed and embankments are covered with an all-metal superstructure in the form of an arched truss with a tie (Lр = 100 m);
• The bridge deck is designed to run on a ballast base for maximum noise reduction;
• supports on a pile foundation made of bored pillars with a diameter of 1.5 m;
• solid support body;
• architectural lighting of bridges.
Within the framework of the project, the following works were also carried out:
• significant step-by-step reconstruction of station railway tracks, communication networks, signaling and contact networks, electrical, water, sewer and heating networks;
• construction of new treatment facilities;
• demolition of a part of service and technical buildings and structures with construction to replace their new ones.
For the construction period, the project provided for a bypass railway track with a temporary double-track bridge, which made it possible to preserve the existing train traffic pattern.
Reconstruction of bridges also made it possible to renovate the embankments, as a result of which the carriageway on the South Embankment was expanded to 6 lanes (instead of 2 lanes), on the North Embankment to 4 lanes (instead of 2 lanes). In addition, the underbridge clearance has become 5 m (instead of 3.4–3.8 m).
New bridges have become not just functional objects, but also a real architectural decoration of the area, where the industrial development zone is predominant.
The American Bridges were opened on December 25, 2012.
