Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated India's longest rail-road bridge on the Brahmaputra river

Bogibeel, Dec 25 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday inaugurated India's longest rail-road bridge on the Brahmaputra river. The bridge has been thrown open 16 years after it was announced by the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The 4.9 km-long Bogibeel Bridge has a two-line railway track on the lower deck and a three-lane road on the top deck. The bridge reduces travel time from Assam to Arunachal Pradesh to four hours and will cut out the detour of over 170 km via Tinsukia. It will also reduce Delhi to Dibrugarh train-travel time by around three hours to 34 hours as against 37 hours presently.

Without precedent for Indian Railways, the support has a steel floor framework for railroad tracks and cement for the street. 'Most 2D' programmed settling programming was used to generate efficient two-dimensional cutting plans for fabricating the steel superstructure for the bridge.

After December 25, people, particularly patients from Assam Medical College, can travel straight from Dibrugarh from the opposite side of the river instead of using the ferries.

The bridge is a part of infrastructure projects arranged by India to improve logistics along the border in Arunachal Pradesh. This includes the construction of a trans-Arunachal highway on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, and new road and rail links over the mighty river and its major tributaries such as the Dibang, Lohit, Subansiri and Kameng.