Langkawi Sky Bridge

The Langkawi Sky Bridge

The Langkawi Sky Bridge is a bridge in Malaysia designed to carry pedestrians.  It is located at the top of the Machinchang mountain on the island Pulau Langkawi.  The bridge is two thousand feet above sea level and is only used for sightseeing as it has no other use.  What is interesting about the bridge is its design and position.  The bridge is a curved walkway that is 125 meters long and is suspended by 8 cables connected to a single pylon.  The pylon is tilted at 78 degrees and is 82 meters tall.

The engineering behind the bridge is the most incredible part behind it though.  The bridge is supported by suspension in the form of cables from a single pylon.  This means that the weight distribution had to be perfectly calculated.  This made the designing stage much harder.  Also, the construction of the bridge was also incredibly complicated.  Because of the location of the bridge, the workers had to pre-build parts of the bridge and then air lifted by a helicopter to the top of the mountain.  Once there, the workers used a cable and winch system to finish the assembly.
The bridge ended up costing 1.2 million dollars and took about one year to build.  In 2012 they closed it to upgrade its structural support by changing some parts into steel.  The bridge now has a total capacity of 200 people.