Friday, August 12, 2011

New Zealand's Bridges: New Waimakariri Bridges in Christchurch

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?
Creative Commons License
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.

1 comment:

James said...

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.