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| March 2011 (-43.414 Degrees, 172.646 Degrees) New Waimakariri Bridge The Waimakariri River is quite a way south of this photo. Perhaps the owners of the Christchurch Northern Motorway wanted to provide the smallest possible grade for their bridges. Or maybe it was essential to provide a couple of roads north of the river. A braided river constantly regrades its path to the sea (as it drops sediment along its path). Perhaps long bridges were necessary over a river that periodically changes its channel. The new Waimakariri River Bridges are precast I girder bridges on pier walls with very long bent caps. Perhaps the extra large caps are to accommodate a bridge widening at some future date? |
New Zealand's Bridges: New Waimakariri Bridges in Christchurch by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Yes, each bridge is designed to carry three lanes of traffic. When the Christchurch Northern Motorway was completed in the early 1970's, it was only completed with 4 lanes of traffic. With the future development of the Northern Corridor leading to the Motorway, a third lane will be added to the northbound bridge and motorway.
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