The Padma River Bridge and related new routes in Bangladesh

https://bdnews24.com/economy/2018/03/11/third-span-of-padma-bridge-installed

The Padma Bridge is being built spanning the Padma River. This channel carries most of the water flowing down both the Ganges and Bramhaputra draining all of North India and the Tibet plateau, essentially all the water that carries down from the Himalayas east of Simla. Allegedly, it has a greater flow, specially during Monsoon, than any single channel of even the Amazon in its estuary. Padma at this point (a rather narrow portion of it) is a bit over 6km (about 4 miles) wide and more than 100m (~325 feet) deep in places, with unusually rapid flow so close to the sea, and rapidly moving sedimentary formations.

The main bridge consists of 41 spans 150m each (almost 500') carrying one (160kph/100mph passenger 120kph/75mph freight) rail track in a run through truss with planned capacity of 40 train per day initially going up to 4tph eventually after electrification, and a deck above the truss carrying a four lane highway. Each of the 42 pylons sit on piling driven into the river bed as much as 400m ((1,300') below the bed. The bridge is designed to withstand earthquakes of upto magnitude eight.

Upon completion of this bridge and the related railroad connection to Jessore, travel time from Kolkata to Dhaka will go down to below four hours (from the current 8+ hours).

If things stay on course it will come in at the third most expensive bridge in the world. The project is currently funded about 2/3rds by China through a loan and 1/3rd by Bangladesh.

Incidentally it is likely that the 4th through 6th span at the south end of the bridge will go up within the next couple of months. The they wills tart installing spans on the north end while the redesigned pylons to account for clay at the bottom of the river are constructed mid river.

A betting man would guess that the bridge structure may be completed and ready for use by late 2019. The initial rail connection to India from this bridge will be via Bhanga - Faridpur - Kushtya (near where it joins the current route of the Dhaka - Kolkata service via the Gede border.

For reference, here is a map:

Too bad the poor little US can't afford to build anything anymore except Berlin Type Walls!

Well, the New York East Side Access Project is a technically remarkable, and remarkably overpriced project. The San Francisco Bay Bridge replacement is a great one too, though not as hard to build as this one.

The Gateway Project if and when it happens will cost way way more than this bridge but won;t be anything as remarkable as it, unfortunately. Hudson is a very pretty but really tiny river.

NPR's Marketplace had a program (ok, well, ok, a piece about) about tunneling costs in Nu Yawk. Way higher than anywhere else.

So the bridge is basically between Dhaka and Faridpur, more or less, on the map?

The core bridge route is from Dhaka to where the green line ends south of Faridpur, that is Bhanga. The actual 6km bridge is across the stream that passes close to Faridpur but south of it, by Bhanga. The other stream closer to Dhaka (Burhiganga) used to be once upon a time, a major channel of the Ganga. It is not any more. The route will of course cross that too, but not on something considered a major bridge. Just around 1km or so, and pretty shallow flood stream mostly.

Major movement of streams and channels is a major headache in bridge building. They have to train the river to stay in its channel and not decamp somewhere else. To give you an example of huge channel movements, Bramhaputra which comes in from the north and joins the Padma a little north of Faridpur, Back in the mid 18th century it used to flow mostly through a channel flowing into the Meghna River which flows on the east side (right of Dhaka), and there was very little flow into the main Ganga channel Burhiganga nearer Dhaka, from Bramhaputra. The current Padma Channel was a lesser channel. All these flows got shuffled after a major earthquake in the late 18th century raised the Mymansingh Plateau slightly, causing the Bramhaputra to flow further west and join the Ganga where it does today, and convert Padma into this Godzilla channel that it is today.

Consequently, there is about a total of a hundred miles of river bank protection and training work involved to ensure that the darned river continues to flow under the bridge after it is built, rather than somewhere else.


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Funny you should mention the shifting channels. I was trying to locate the bridge on google maps and on bing maps and the channel was totally different in each of them. Google maps showed the piers of the bridge construction. I was just reading about why the Amazon has no bridges - they would need to be 30 miles long for the high water periods to be able to make it across the flooded channels....

I found this really nice map showing the new rail route that is being constructed (the dashed line between Dhaka and Jessore) in connection with the Padma River Bridge. It shows clearly how this will considerably shorten the running time on the international Maitree Express between Kolkata and Dhaka, maybe down to as little as five to six hours.



Incidentally they have started constructing the rail deck on the girders that are already in place for the bridge. Completion of the bridge realistically will be late 2020 or early 2021 it seems.

After four years of construction the bridge is getting close to completion

https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/padma-bridge-rail-link-project-bangladesh/
The link to Joshore (erstwhile Jessore) will become part of a much shorter route for the international Kolkata - Dhaka service, making it a run of less than five hours, instead of an all day affair.

I am surprised only a single track on the bridge. Hope that does not become a very expensive to fix bottleneck.

AmtrakMaineiac said:

I am surprised only a single track on the bridge. Hope that does not become a very expensive to fix bottleneck.

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You build what you can pay for I suppose. Already many in Bangladesh are unhappy with the amount that is financed through China. Any more cost would have sunk the whole project.

Anyway it is designed for 6tph in each direction. Given similar corridors that are being built say between Dhaka and Chittagong that would appear to be more than sufficient until the second planned bridge at Goalondo is built in a few decades.

Metra Electric Rider said:

Funny you should mention the shifting channels. I was trying to locate the bridge on google maps and on bing maps and the channel was totally different in each of them. Google maps showed the piers of the bridge construction. I was just reading about why the Amazon has no bridges - they would need to be 30 miles long for the high water periods to be able to make it across the flooded channels....

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Here is an article about the meandering and moving channels of the Padma. The place marked as Char Janajat in the first frame is where the new bridge is located and the river has been trained into a fixed channel with extensive bank stabilization.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/PadmaRiver
A more concise location map of the bridge relative to Char Janajat can be found at:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure...-and-char-dwellers-livelihoods_fig2_233541993
Here is a nice animation of the river's movement over the last several decades....

https://i0.wp.com/www.maproomblog.com/xq/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/padma.gif
The difficulty of building a bridge across that is obvious and explains why the bridge is over 6km long.

The 6.15kM long New Padma Bridge in Bangladesh is already open for road traffic on the upper deck. Rapid progress is being made in laying the ballastless rail track on the lower deck. The video does not have any commentary, only music, so language fluency is not a problem.



In a few years when the entire route from Dhaka to Joshore is completed, Joshore and Khulna will be within 3.5 hours running time from Dhaka compared to over 10 hours now. The time for traveling from Kolkata to Dhaka will be reduced to around five hours from the current slightly more than 12 hours.

Inaugural run of a test train across the 6.15km long bridge took place a few days back (April 4, 2023)

https://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/b592g5o2cb

Regular commercial rail service will start on the bridge will begin soon. It will be a complete game changer for all service in South Bengal. Kolkata to Dhaka running time will go down from 10 hours to three and a half hours for the Maitree Express. New service between Kolkata and Agartala in the East Indian State of Tripura which now takes 30 hours, will go down to as little as 6 hours. And for the first time, my ancestral town on my Maternal Grandfather's side, Borishal, will soon get its first rail service ever.

Here is an article on what the current state of play is:

https://www.bangladeshlivenews.com/...n-dhaka-kolkata-travel-time-railway-officials
Interestingly, originally this was supposed to be funded by the World Bank, but that plan got bogged down in a corruption investigation. Instead of waiting for the World Bank to get around to funding it, Bangladesh fired World Bank and got funding from a loan from China. China tried to say it is part of the Belt and Road Project, but Bangladesh rebuffed that attempt and said it was just a bilateral deal for this project and has nothing to with whatever else China thinks it is. They apparently have the hard cash in place to pay back the loan and have started doing so already. That kitty is going to be replenished by the tolls collected from the users of the bridge. As a consequence of all these wheeling and dealing, China got the contract to build this $3+ Billion dollar project instead of Western companies. And of course possibly there was some amount of corruption involved too. But they got a game changing bridge out of all that.

Here is another article with some technical details...

https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/padma-bridge-rail-link-project-bangladesh/

First commercial rail service to begin across the Padma Bridge in September 2023...

https://www.thedailystar.net/news/b...padma-bridge-rail-line-open-september-3288881
For now it will connect to Bhanga which is connected to Pordaha Jn. near Hardinge Bridge on the Kolkata - Gede - Darshana line. Oddly the junction at Pordaha is still only facing towards Khulna/Kolkata with no connection towards the rest of Bangladesh Railway to the North.

Incidentally the entire new route from Dhaka to Jessore across the new bridge is now shown as under construction on the Open Railway Map. But beware, there are several details of new routes missing from it, specially in India. Also, all the station names in Bangladesh appear to be shown only in Bengali script, which might present a bit of a challenge to those not familiar with the script.

Most of the route is now visible in Google Earth View now, but there are various frames where Google is yet to update them with recent enough photos from space to contain the route under construction. I guess the sticks of deltaic Bangladesh is not that hot in Google's priorities for updating photos.

First unofficial run of a train across the new Padma Bridge, which took place on 7 September 2023. There is no words spoken so no need to know Bengali to view this video...



This run is at reduced speed. Normally trains will operate at 120kph (75mph) on this bridge. They will take a shade over 3 minutes to cross it.

Rail service on the bridge will be officially inaugurated on the 10th of October by Bangladesh Prime Minister Ms. Sheikh Hasina.

Commercial service from Dhaka Kamalapur to Bhanga and possibly all the way to Faridpur will start on the 17th of October. On the first day of comemrcial operation, 5 of the 10 stations between Dhaka Kamalapur and Bhanga will be in operation.

The new line from Bhanga to Joshore is yet to be completed. When it is completed service will start to Joshore and Khulna.

Also Maitree Express between Kolkata and Dhaka will start using this route via Joshore. Running time between Kolkata and Dhaka will be reduced from the current 8.5 hours to as little as 4 hours. This is likely to happen sometime in June 2024. Maitree Express will not stop at Kamalapur. It will run through nonstop to Dhaka Cantonment since the C&I facilities are at Dhaka Cantonment. I am sure there will be a ceremonial re-introduction of the Maitree Express at that time, and it is very likely that it will also become a daily train since a single consist will be able to do a round trip in the same day.

Good to see the camera crews observing all the health and safety rules as they ride the exterior of the loco!

I am guessing brand new coaching stock, I have never seen such a clean grabrail on any of my rides!

I have to say that crossing over to Rameswaram with the train door wide open and looking down into the sea below was a lot of fun too...

Here is an article on how the project was funded:

https://www.tbsnews.net/economy/bridges-division-begins-repayment-padma-bridge-loan-611338
Originally the World Bank was supposed to give a loan of $1.2 Billion, but it demanded that certain "corrupt" practices be fixed first before they will disburse the funds. However, they failed to prove their case in a Canadian Court, which threw the entire case out for lack of credible evidence. By then Bangladesh had had enough as it delayed the whole project by several years, and decided not to pursue restoration of the World Bank loan and associated ADB and Japanese funding. They made separate arrangements for Finance, Design and Build with China, and that is how the bridge got built. Somehow they managed to get surprisingly good terms from China. China tried to include the project in their Belt and Road umbrella, but Bangladesh refused.

Anyhow, back to trains. In connection with this project 100 new passenger cars have been acquired, this time from China, and two dozen high power diesel locomotives from GE Transportation, which is really Wabtec these days.

The direct link from Padma Bridge to Jashore/Khulna in Southwest Bangladesh has been completed and there is likely to be a final Safety Check trial run in April.

Once this segment goes into service it will allow operation at 120kph for the first time in Bangladesh reducing the running time between Jashore and Dhaka to a little under 2.5 hours.

The Kolkata - Dhaka Maitree Express will be moved over to this route reducing the Kolkata - Dhaka time to around 5 hours. In addition all Dhaka to Khulna and Jashore will be moved over to this segment. In doing so it will stop using the Gede-Darshana border crossing and use the Petrapole-Benapole border crossing. The Indian C&I will continue to be done at Kolkata International station. It is not clear what the arrangement in Bangladesh will be, though it is possible continue with the current arrangement if the train has no stops in Bangladesh other than Dhaka.

For reference here is a map showing the new route using a dashed line between Dhaka and Jessore (now spelled Jashore on the station board):



It is likely that by August this year (2024) these changes will take place, though with a little bit of luck it could happen a little earlier.

This a truly international affair as far as construction and operation goes. The track was constructed by the Chinese. The primary passenger train consists will be with equipment manufactured in the Indonesia (PT INKA), China and India, (RCF Kapurthala and ICF Perambur) and locomotives from the US (EMD) and India (BLW, Varanasi). And of course it will be operated by Bangladesh Railways Dhaka, Greater Faridpur and Khulna Divisions..

jis said:

Once this segment goes into service it will allow operation at 120kph for the first time in Bangladesh reducing the running time between Jashore and Dhaka to a little under 325 hours.

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I am guessing it will in fact be a tad quicker than that 325 hours?

caravanman said:

I am guessing it will in fact be a tad quicker than that 325 hours?

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Yeah. It is supposed to be 2.5 hours. Fixed. Thanks.

Oh wow I’m behind reading/posting on this thread.

Trip to Bangladesh and Norway stilll in the works Some train travel in Bangladesh but more in Norway,

Given the recent meltdown in Bangladesh, and refugees trying to leave Bangladesh, I assume the rail links to India will have been halted at this time?

caravanman said:

Given the recent meltdown in Bangladesh, and refugees trying to leave Bangladesh, I assume the rail links to India will have been halted at this time?

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All rail traffic is shut down across the border and a lot of it even inside Bangladesh is suspended. Cross border road traffic is also seriously curtailed with truck movements stopped completely at least until yesterday. Don't know what has happened since then.

Meanwhile, three weeks back the exclusively rail bridge across the Jamuna adjacent to the rail cum road bridge (Bangabandhu Setu) buitl with Japanese Aid, was completed and put into service.

All domestic service in Bangladesh has been restored. Cross border traffic will take a while until the political complications are adequately addressed.