Cable-Stayed Bridges - Golden Ears Bridge (3)

I was going to provide a photo of a pedestrian on-ramp for the Golden Ears Bridge today, but then I realized I had already shown it in Saturday's photo. In that photo, the ramp (with a circle of columns all of the same height) provides a well-balanced seismic design. Also, the short piers for the bridge approaches are protected from the larger seismic demands of the taller river crossing with expansion joints.

For today's photo, I provided a view of the bridge deck of the Golden Ears Bridge, You can see eagles flying next to the pylons on the first tower. I'm not sure what the golden cylinders on the sides are meant to be (perhaps golden ears of corn?). Also, I'm surprised there are no cross-braces at the tops of the towers to improve the bridge's seismic behavior.

The pylons were quickly assembled out of steel boxes stacked together with a crane. The boxes alternate with anchor sections. Stay-in-place forms allowed the exterior concrete to be quickly poured. After each anchor section went up and the concrete was poured, the next steel girder and floor beam section could be hung from the towers.

Cable-Stayed Bridges - Golden Ears Bridge (3) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.