A 5.1-km long cable-stayed "Atal Setu" on the Mandovi river in Goa, a third such bridge to connect the state capital with North Goa, was Sunday opened to public by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari.

Ailing Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, Union AYUSH Minister Shripad Naik and other ministers from the state also attended the event to inaugurate the four-lane bridge which at 2.5 lakh tonnes is equivalent to the weight of 570 Boeing aircraft.

The bridge is made of 1 lakh cubic metres of high strength, high performance concrete enough to fill 40 Olympic size swimming pools, an official had said.

Around 13,000 tonnes of corrosion resistant reinforcement steel, 32,000 square metres of structural steel plates and 1,800 kilometres of high tensile pre-stressing strands have gone into making the bridge.

The bridge has 88 high tensile strength cables in the state-of-art single place harp type cable stay system, and a real-time force monitoring mechanism.

The bridge is constructed by the GIDC (Goa Infrastructure Development Corporation) and engineering and construction major Larsen and Toubro.

The link will decongest Panaji to a great extent, as approximately 66,000 vehicles enter the capital city every day.

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