Toronto's Bridges: Dundas Street Bridge

We are continuing down the Don River in Toronto to our next bridge. It's another three span crossing, but with a steel deck arch only for the center span over the river.  This bridge is not quite as elegant as the last few bridges we've been studying, but it still seems quite serviceable. Its main problem is that its old and poorly maintained. The concrete pier on the right has long vertical cracks, suggesting that the reinforcement is rusted, expanding, and causing the concrete to split.  In fact a lot of the concrete that should be on the piers appears to have spalled and fallen onto the ground. I read that the city of Toronto planned to do some repairs and hopefully it's now in better shape.

However, the steel members look in good repair (freshly painted and no rust). In fact, the steel members looks beefier than the Gerard Street Bridge, with deeper arch ribs and with stiffer cross-bracing between the spandrel columns. Since both the Gerard and Dundas Bridges are four lane bridges carrying streetcars, the Dundas Bridge may have been designed more conservatively simply because it is an older design.

Toronto's Bridges: Dundas Street Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.