Claudelands Bridge

About

Claudelands Bridge is a dual-lane truss road bridge over the Waikato River, joining Claudelands with Hamilton Central. In 1968 it was converted from the old railway bridge, which had been completed about the end of July 1883. The road bridge was given a Category 2 listing in 1985. Vehicle use has declined in recent years, but it is the second busiest CBD route for cyclists, with 135 in peak hours in 2009 and a rising trend. To make the bridge safer for the 600 cyclists a day, sharrows were added to the lane markings in 2019. Buses to Rototuna and route 11 cross the bridge. A new railway bridge, opened on 19 September 1964, a few metres downstream, replaced the old with a 7-span, 143 m (469 ft) pre-stressed concrete box girder bridge. The spans are supported by reinforced concrete piers, resting on in-situ cast piles. The bridge, built by Wilkinson and Davies Construction Co Ltd (involved in a 1959 contract law case and deregistered in 1967), is about 20 ft (6.1 m) lower than the road bridge, being 18 m (59 ft) above the normal river level. It was the first bridge in the country to be stressed with a 100-ton Freyssinet cable.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.