1895+1925(SOC)+1978 FEC Bridges over New River in Fort Lauderdale, FL

1895: (Bridge Hunter)

1925: (Actually, I think the 1895 Bridge Hunter documents this bridge. [HistoryFortLauderdale])

1978: (Bridge Hunter; 3D Satellite)

SOC = Strauss Overhead Counterweight

Those counterweights made me curious as to what the rest of the bridge looked like.

Steven J. Brown posted
Brightline Siemens SC-44 Charger 107 crossing the New River in Ft Lauderdale, Florida - February 15, 2022.

Street View

JordanYachts
[This page has a nice history of the crossing and confirms that the bridge has to be up for most boats because it is so low. It also explains that the 1978 bridge was built to add a second track to reduce the number of closings. And that commuter service does not exist because that would cause to many more closings.]

At first I thought it was a rolling bridge because of the curved member. But then I noticed in Steven's photo that there are no holes in those members to keep the members on the foundations. This photo shows that it is a trunnion bridge with the trunnion mounted a ways above the track level. The unusual counterweight shape is to keep it out of the water when the bridge is raised. Building the span with girders instead of a truss is also rather rare.

Mark Boettcher via BridgeHunter-1978

 

Photo by Phillip Pessar via BridgeHunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

To accommodate commuter trains they are considering building a new bridge that would be 80' above the river or a tunnel under the river. Everybody except the county commissioners wants a tunnel. The commissioners want a bridge because the tunnel would cost $1.8b, four times the cost of the bridge. [MassTransitMag]

Whoops, the cost of the tunnel is up to $3.3b according to a $750k feasibility study. And the tunnel now costs seven times more than a 80' bridge. The bridge alternatives are: "A 21-foot movable bridge would cost $134.3 million to build and $1.9 million a year to maintain. A 55-foot movable bridge would come with a $443.7 million price and a yearly maintenance cost of $3.3 million. An 80-foot span would cost $478 million to build and $2.4 million to maintain." [sun-sentinel] I'm sure it is significant that in this case the "marine industry" includes rich people and their yachts.

This is another view of the high pivot point for the bridge to create room for the counterweight. Note the electronic sign. Is that the time of its next closure?

Photo by Dorie Cox via the-triton
The clearance is just 4'. Until the Brightline service was added, the bridge was normally open. They did an experiment in 2015 with it being normally closed but staffed with a bridge tender. But I have not been able to find any results of that experiment. But a quick look at Google Earth indicates that it is back to normally open.

I added the bridgeRare label to bridgeStrauss to indicate that the older bridge is not his usual jackknife design. It is a variant of the overhead counterweight design that we have seen for the NYC bridge in Zanesville, OH.

Cleveland State University Library Photograph Collection via BridgeHunter-1895