Bridge Octavio Frias de Oliveira
On May 10th 2008, Governor José Serra opened to the public the newest bridge of São Paulo; the bridge is official called Bridge Octavio Frias de Oliveira (Mr. Frias, who died in 2007 at age 94, was the publisher of newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, one of the most important in Brazil). Despite this official name though, the bridge is becoming known as Ponte Estaiada, which is the Portuguese for Suspended Bridge.
The bridge is located over the river Pinheiros, and connects avenue Roberto Marinho to the Marginal Pinheiros; about 5,000 vehicles per hour, each way, should cross the bridge at peak times.
Besides being useful to relief traffic jams, the bridge, thanks to its grandness and beautiness, is also becoming a tourism spot of São Paulo.
This will be the longest curved suspended bridge in the world, 290 meters (950 feet) long each way; the large X in the middle is 138 meters (450 ft) tall; a set of 144 steel cables were used to hold the structure.
See Veja magazine for details (in Portuguese) about the construction of the bridge; see aerial images of the bridge.