Gazela Bridge

The Gazela Bridge (Serbian: Mост Газела / Most Gazela) is the most important bridge in Belgrade, Serbia, across the Sava river. It is a part of the city highway and it lies on European route E75, on the highway passing through the wider city center, connecting Belgrade with Niš to the south, and Novi Sad to the north. The bridge was designed by a group of engineers led by Milan Đurić, and built by the Mostogradnja company.

The bridge is 332 m long and 27.5 m wide, with three lanes in each direction, and total road width of 21.8 m. It is constructed as a combination of beam and arch, with shallow-frame beam and diagonal steel-concrete abutments. The maximum height of the span centre is 22.8 m at median water level.

The bridge is the main connection between downtown Belgrade and New Belgrade, and also carries the transit traffic on E70 and E75 highways through Serbia. As such, it is extremely overloaded and a cause of frequent congestion, as it leans on the main Belgrade's Mostar interchange. On average over 160,000 vehicles cross it every day (notwithstanding the impeded flow), even though it was designed to be used by 40,000. However, the bridge was almost completely redone in 2011 and it now supports up to 200,000 vehicles per day. Additional relief is expected when the Belgrade bypass is completed, which is currently under construction and is scheduled to be opened in 2013. There was also a significant relief when the new Ada Bridge was opened for traffic, on January 1, 2012.

Gazela

Gazela is a 1901 wooden tall-ship homeported in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She serves as the maritime goodwill ambassador for the City of Philadelphia, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Ports of Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey. She has been featured in a number of films, and participated in domestic and international events, including OpSail 2000.

History

The barquentine Gazela Primeiro (meaning Gazelle the First in Portuguese) was built in the shipyard of J. M. Mendes in Setúbal, Portugal in 1883. At that time the Portuguese fisheries authorities had a regulation prohibiting the construction of new vessels for the Grand Banks cod fishery. It was however permissible to modify or "rebuild" an existing vessel. The best information available indicates that the registration of a much smaller, two-masted vessel built in Cacilhas in 1883, named Gazella (spelled with two Ls), was transferred by the owners to the newly built vessel in 1901. There is no evidence that any timbers from the earlier vessel were re-used in the construction of the later one; a practice which would make no sense to a commercial wooden shipbuilder in the 1900s.