San Juanico Bridge

San Juanico Bridge (Filipino: Tulay ng San Juanico and Spanish: Puente de San Juanico) is part of the Pan-Philippine Highway and stretches from Samar to Leyte across the San Juanico Strait in the Philippines.^[2] Its longest length is a steel girder viaduct built on reinforced concrete piers, and its main span is of an arch-shaped truss design. Constructed during the Marcos administration using Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) loans,^[5] it has a total length of 2.16 kilometers (1.34 mi) - the longest bridge spanning a body of seawater in the Philippines.^[6][7]

San Juanico Bridge
The San Juanico Bridge, view from Samar, towards Leyte
Coordinates	11°18′10″N124°58′19″E
Carries	2 lanes of  N1/ AH26 (Maharlika Highway); pedestrian sidewalks
Crosses	San Juanico Strait[1]
Locale	Santa Rita, Samar and Tacloban, Leyte[2]
Other name(s)	Philippine-Japan Friendship Highway bridge;[3] Marcos Bridge[4]
Maintained by	Department of Public Works and Highways
Characteristics
Design	Arch-shaped truss bridge
Total length	2,164 m (7,100 ft)
Longest span	192 m (630 ft)
No. of spans	43
History
Constructed by	Construction and Development Corporation of the Philippines
Construction start	1969
Construction end	1973
Construction cost	US$22 million (₱140 million)
Opened	2 July 1973
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Touted as President Ferdinand Marcos' "birthday gift" to his wife Imelda,^[6] it was one of the high-visibility foreign-loan projects initiated by Marcos during the run-up to the 1969 Presidential election campaign.^[8]Completed four years later, it was inaugurated on 2 July 1973 - Imelda Marcos' birthday.^[6]Upon its completion, economists and public works engineers quickly tagged it as a white elephant which was "constructed several decades too soon",^[2] because its average daily traffic (ADT) was too low to justify the cost of its construction.^[2] As a result, its construction has been associated with what has been called the Marcoses' "edifice complex".^[9][10]

In the decades after the Marcoses administration, economic activity in Samar and Leyte has finally caught up with the bridge's intended function, and it has become an iconic tourist attraction acknowledged as "part of the identity of people in Samar and Leyte."^[10]