Spanning 255 m, the Zandhazen railway bridge is the longest railway arch bridge in Europe. It carries two railway tracks over the A1 motorway in Muiderberg, east of Amsterdam, and has a width of about 17 m and height of 55 m. The bridge was opened in August 2016.Due to the need to minimise disruption to road and railway traffic, the most critical aspect of the design was to ensure ease of transportation and installation. For this reason, steel grade S460 was chosen for the main girders and arch sections to limit the bridge self-weight. The total cost of the railway bridge, including the substructure, was about € 40 Million. The Zandhasen railway bridge is part of the Schiphol-AmsterdamAlmere (SAA) project, a huge infrastructure development that aims to increase the road capacity of the Schiphol-AmsterdamAlmere corridor to alleviate the current traffic congestion. SAA will be the largest road construction project in the Netherlands in the period 2012-2024.At the Muiderberg intersection, the A1 motorway will be widened from six to sixteen lanes and the existing prestressed concrete railway bridge over it will be dismantled and replaced by the new Zandhasen bridge with significantly larger span.Read the case study