New Zealand's Bridges: Mandeville Footbridge across the Kaiapoi River in Christchurch (2)

March 2011 (-43.381 Degrees, 172.656 Degrees) Mandeville Footbridge

Due to frequent earthquakes during the last year this old, formerly elegant suspension bridge has become sadly disheveled. Fulton Hogan, an expert in cable bridge repairs, has begun re-tensioning the cables. The Waimakariri District Council has evaluated several approaches for the repair and hopeful they can return this symbol of Christchurch and Kaiapoi to its former attractiveness and functionality. 

Five spans with short, wooden towers and only two anchorages means these cables have to resist a lot of tension to hold up the deck without overloading the towers. Suspension footbridges are interesting structures, so we'll take a look at another one tomorrow.

New Zealand's Bridges: Mandeville Footbridge Across the Kaiapoi River in Christchurch (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.