| Bridge Name: | Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge |
| Official Name: | Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge |
| Carries: | N25 road |
| Crosses: | River Barrow |
| Locale: | Glenmore |
| Maint: | BAM Civil and Iridium[1] |
| Designer: | ARUP and Carlos Fernandez Casado SL |
| Design: | Extradosed bridge |
| Material: | Concrete |
| Spans: | 9 |
| Pierswater: | 1 |
| Begin: | 2016 |
| Complete: | December 2019 |
| Open: | 30 January 2020 |
| Coordinates: | 52.3567°N -6.9923°W |
The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge is an extradosed bridge over the River Barrow in Ireland. It was built as part of the N25 New Ross Bypass, and was officially opened on 29 January 2020 by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and opened to traffic on 30 January 2020, becoming Ireland's longest bridge.[2] [3] The bridge received in 2021 an Outstanding Structure Award from the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering.
The bridge is controversially officially named after Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the mother of former US President John F. Kennedy whose ancestors came from nearby Dunganstown.[4] It is also popularly referred to as the Pink Rock Bridge[5] or as the New Ross Bypass Bridge, and as the Barrow Crossing in technical materials related to its construction.
The main spans of the bridge are the longest concrete-only extradosed box-girder bridge spans in the world. The spans are equal in length to the main span of the N25 Suir Bridge in Waterford; and four metres shorter the main span of the Foyle Bridge in Northern Ireland, which is 21 metres shorter in total length. The two central main spans are supported by a central plane of stay cables passing through saddles located on three towers at the three central supports. The distinctive feature of the Bridge is the different height of the towers. The side towers have a height of 16.2m and have 8 passing cables and the central pier has a height of 27.0m and 18 passing cables.
The side spans over dry land on both sides of the river Barrow were built using a scaffold and a wing form traveller. The main spans were built using the balanced cantilever method. At its maximum length from the central pier, the west span cantilevered 140m over the river.