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Yangpu Bridge and Xupu Bridge, two of Shanghai's three major bridges, have been seriously damaged by traffic accidents and overloaded vehicles.

The Morning News reported recently that the Xupu Bridge saw an average of two accidents every two days in April, not including minor contact with the bridge. On a randomly selected day, in one hour 38 overloaded vehicles crossed the Xupu bridge. One truck with a limitation of 12 tons arrived on the bridge loaded down with 38 tons of freight, a 200 percent overload.

According to Jiang from the Xupu Bridge Managing Company, traffic accidents including break-downs and pile-ups destroy the walls, light poles, fire hydrants, emergency phones and other facilities on the bridges.

Yangpu bridge, a cable-stayed bridge with a center span of 602 meters. opened in 1993, setting a world record at that time. Xupu, another suspension bridge, opened in 1996.
Each of the three bridges over the Huangpu River - Nanpu, Yangpu, Xupu - handles over 100,000 vehicles a day, an increase of 10 percent over last year.

Heavy bridge traffic creates maintenance costs between 4 million yuan (US$495,000) and 5 million yuan (US$620,00) a year per bridge, notes Chen Jian Hua, manager of the Shanghai Huangpu River Tunnels and Bridges Development Company. "