ANJI KHAD

The first railway cable-stayed bridge to be designed and built in India - a unique, iconic, and ambitious work that will contribute significantly to raising the standards of infrastructure reliability and improving connections in territorial and international terms.

In 2016, Italferr was awarded the design and works supervision of the Anji Khad cable-stayed railway bridge crossing the Anji River in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. With a length of 725 m x 196 m in height, it is located on the Katra-Banihal section of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla railway line and stands out as one of the most ambitious and challenging projects of the entire railway line that will cross the northwestern region of India, along the slopes of Kashmir, to the border with Pakistan. Italferr proposed and developed an iconic 473 m asymmetrical cable-stayed bridge solution, with a main span length of 290 m and a single 193 m high support tower located on the most accessible side of the gorge. This was a strategic choice in order to facilitate most of the construction on one end and thus enable its completion. An approach based on assessment of the available space and on slope stability. The innovative mode of operation ensured structural integrity and simplified construction processes, demonstrating a deep understanding of the project's functional needs and local conditions.

This was an unprecedented engineering challenge, given the morphology of the area and the extremely demanding conditions due to the characteristics of the Anji River that flows through a deep gorge with sub-vertical walls, in an area characterized by very strong winds.

The main work on the project was completed in February 2024, and opening for public use is expected in April 2025.

Acknowledgements: The Anji Khad Bridge project has been awarded the Award of Merit in the Bridge/Tunnel category of the ENR Global Best Projects 2024. This prestigious award, given by an international jury that reviewed more than 120 applications, testifies to the innovation and engineering quality of Italferr's project, ranking it among the best infrastructure projects globally. The ENR Global Best Projects Awards, given annually by Engineering News-Record (ENR) magazine, honor the world's most outstanding infrastructure projects by evaluating nominations based on criteria of safety, innovation and sustainability.

Project client: KRCL, Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (Konkan public railway infrastructure’s manager).