Australia's Bridges: Kurilpa Bridge across the Brisbane River in Queensland (2)

March 2011 (-27.469 deg., 153.018 deg.) Kurilpa Bridge

A view of the Kurilpa Bridge from the deck of the Victoria Bridge as I raced to catch the Brisbane River ferry. 

Brisbane held a contest to rename what was the 'Tank Street Bridge' and the aboriginal word for 'place for water rats' overwhelmingly won. A similarity (besides Ove Arup as the engineer) with London's Millennium Bridge is that both bridges carry pedestrians across rivers to museums of modern art. That may be the compelling reason for creating a 'visionary' bridge.

As can be seen in the photo, the Kurilpa Bridge is a three span structure on tapered, two-column bents. Although most of the masts/towers are supported at the bents, there are also masts/towers along all three spans. Whether those elements actually carry compression forces is doubtful. More likely they are in tension and help support the spans. On the Wikipedia website, we can see that during construction, the cantilevered superstructure is supported by the masts.

The bridge rises to the north to provide clearance for the Pacific Motorway/Coronation Drive Bridges. Consequently, the cyclists are either standing on their pedals or freewheeling downhill. Hopefully, the pedestrians are well-protected.

Australia's Bridges: Kurilpa Bridge across the Brisbane River in Queensland (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.