Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Traffic Bridge

Talk about a bridge to nowhere.

This is a portion of the Traffic Bridge in Saskatoon, which crosses the South Saskatchewan River from downtown. The rest of it is gone. As you'd expect, there's a story involved.

This bridge lasted for more than 100 years. It was built to unite the towns on both sides of the river, with the idea of putting together one big city called Saskatoon. This was the price tag for that merger, as the ferry service wasn't particularly reliable.

The Iron Bridge, which became known as the Traffic Bridge, served residents for decades. But the winters can be a little harsh here, and engineers finally pronounced the bridge as unsafe in 2010. There are plans to replace it in the relatively near future, but first the old bridge has to go. A couple of portions of the Traffic Bridge have been imploded, but as of the summer of 2016 there was still a good-sized chunk of it left.

The Traffic Bridge has a good-sized entry on Wikipedia. Here's a look at how the implosion looked:



Be notified of new posts on this site via Twitter @WDX2BB.

No comments:

Post a Comment