Australia's Bridges: The William Jolly Bridge across the Brisbane River in Queensland (5)

March 2011 (-27.469 deg., 153.016 deg.) William Jolly Bridge

One last photo of the William Jolly Bridge. It was designed by Harding Frew (a local engineer) in the Art Deco Style popular in the 1930s. The bridge was built during the Depression and was a valuable source of jobs for Brisbane. 

The two river foundations were carried into position, dropped to the river bottom, and then lowered onto firm rock by workers digging in pressurized air. The steel arches were brought to the site in several pieces and assembled on the bridge. First, the bottom of the arches were attached to the piers. Then timber falsework was assembled to support the rest of the arch. The arch segments were put together with rivets. Then they were encased in reinforced concrete to become fixed arches. Floor beams were hung from the arches and girders were placed on them. Formwork was set on the girders and the concrete deck was poured and cured.

The completed bridge includes two 33 ft spans on the north bank, three 236 ft long river spans, and seventeen varying length spans on the south bank for a total length of 1640 ft. 

The bridge appears to be well maintained. It has two traffic lanes in each direction and carries over 42000 vehicles every day. During rush hour, Grey Road backs up and the vehicles sit idling on the bridge. New bridges have been built to ease the congestion, but the city can't handle all the vehicles moving through the CBD.

Australia's Bridges: The William Jolly Bridge across the Brisbane River in Queensland (5) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.