Megyeri Bridge

Megyeri Bridge

Megyeri Bridge at night
Coordinates 47°36′26″N 19°05′32″E / 47.60722°N 19.09222°E / 47.60722; 19.09222
Carries M0 beltway of Budapest
Crosses Danube
Locale Budapest,  Hungary
Characteristics
Design cable-stayed bridge
Total length 1,862 m (6,109 ft)
Height 100 m (328 ft)
Longest span 300 m (984 ft)
Clearance below 30 m (98 ft)
History
Opened September 30, 2008

The Megyeri Bridge, previously known as the Northern M0 Danube bridge, is a cable-stayed bridge that spans the River Danube between Buda and Pest, respectively the west and east sides of Budapest, the capital of Hungary. It is an important section of the M0 ringroad around Budapest.

The bridge cost 63 billion forints (approx. US$ 300M) to build and was officially opened on September 30, 2008;[1] however, the National Transport Authority of Hungary has only issued temporary permits because of disagreement among suburban cities surrounding the bridge.

An online naming poll to determine the new name of the recently built bridge caused controversy and received media attention when American comedians Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart won.

Technical information

The total length of the bridge is 1862m. Structurally it is composed of five parts:

  1. Left quayside inundation area bridge: 148m
  2. Main Danube-branch bridge (cable stayed): 590m with a span of 300m
  3. Szentendre Island inundation area bridge: 559m
  4. Szentendre Danube-branch bridge: 332m
  5. Right quayside inundation area bridge: 218m

Naming poll

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Transport of Hungary organized a public vote online to solicit possible names for the new bridge. The three names with the most votes, as well as suggestions from local governments, cartographers, linguists and other experts, were to be reviewed by a government committee before a final name for the bridge was chosen. New nominations were accepted until August 21, 2006, and the voting ended on September 8, 2006, with Stephen Colbert winning with 93,163 votes, and Jon Stewart and Nikola Zrínyi close behind with 85,171 and 83,966 votes, respectively.

On August 1, 2006, Reuters reported that the top candidate according to the online poll was the "Chuck Norris híd", named for American action star Chuck Norris.[2] (Chuck Norris facts reached the height of their popularity around this time.) On August 9, 2006, American satirist Stephen Colbert discussed the story on his comedy program The Colbert Report, instructing his viewers to visit the polling website and vote for him instead of Norris. The next day the number of votes for him had grown 230 times, and he now asked his viewers to follow a link from his own "Colbert Nation" website, to avoid "all that illegible Hungarian". Colbert's site also indirectly offered techniques for "stuffing the ballot box", as users of their forums created several automated scripts to cast multiple votes for Colbert. On August 15, 2006, he repeated his call to be voted top of the Hungarian poll, and by August 22, 2006, the "Stephen Colbert híd" was in first with 17 million votes, about 14 million votes ahead of the second-placed Zrínyi híd, named after the Croatian-Hungarian national hero, Miklós Zrínyi, and about 7 million more than the entire population of Hungary. The same day, the site announced a new round of voting, which would require registration to participate, and Colbert asked his viewers to "call off the dogs", requesting on his website that fans stop using scripts to vote. Despite this, the "Stephen Colbert híd" remained in the top position on the website in the second round.

On September 14, 2006, András Simonyi—the ambassador of Hungary to the United States—announced on The Colbert Report that Stephen Colbert had won the vote. Unfortunately for Colbert, Ambassador Simonyi declared that under Hungarian law, Colbert would have to be fluent in Hungarian, and would have to be deceased in order to have the bridge named for him. However, after saying the rules could most likely be bent, he invited Colbert to visit Hungary and view the construction in person and gave him a Hungarian passport and a 10,000 HUF Bill, with an approximate value of, as the ambassador put it, 'fifty dollars, fifty good US dollars'. Colbert promptly tried to bribe him with said money.[3]

Results

Round 1 Top Five[4]
Name Votes Percentage
Stephen Colbert híd 17231725 53%
Zrínyi híd 2062649 6%
Pató Pál híd 1805118 6%
Bethlen Gábor híd 1735587 5%
Hunyadi Mátyás híd 1478020 5%
Round 2 Top Five[5]
Name Votes Percentage
Stephen Colbert híd 93163 25%
Jon Stewart híd 85171 23%
Zrínyi híd 83966 23%
Eötvös híd 37042 10%
Perl-Script híd 17354 5%

Megyeri Bridge

On September 28, 2006, it was announced that the bridge will be named "Megyeri Bridge", even though that name did not make it to the second round. The Hungarian Geographical Name Committee justified the final name by explaining that the bridge connects Káposztásmegyer and Békásmegyer.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Átadták a csodahidat "Wonder bridge opens"". Index.hu. September 30, 2008.
  2. ↑ "Chuck Norris leads vote for Budapest bridge name". Reuters. August 8, 2006.
  3. ↑ http://indavideo.hu/video/A_Stephen_Colbert_hid_sztori_vege
  4. ↑ "M0-ás híd portál". gkm.gov.hu. September 8, 2006. Archived from the original on October 13, 2006.
  5. ↑ "M0-ás híd portál". gkm.gov.hu. September 8, 2006. Archived from the original on October 13, 2006.
  6. ↑ "The M0 Bridge named as Megyeri Bridge". RTLKlub.hu. September 28, 2006.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Megyeri híd.

Coordinates: 47°36′25.68″N 19°5′31.97″E / 47.6071333°N 19.0922139°E / 47.6071333; 19.0922139

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