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| Street View, Apr 2023 |
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| Street View, Jun 2023 |
The 2015 bridge replaced a tied arch bridge.
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| washington.edu, p17 |
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| Stephen Rees Flickr via Historic Bridges, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) "The Port Mann Bridge carries a very large volume of traffic and it was found that additional lanes were needed. Initially, a preservation solution was developed which would have provided an additional bridge to form a one-way couplet of bridges, thereby preserving the beauty and heritage of the existing bridge. However this idea was scrapped. Why preserve a heritage bridge when instead it can be reduced to scrap metal and deprive the area of an attractive landmark? Therefore, a new cookie-cutter solution of simply spending massive amounts of money to build one entire new bridge and then demolish the heritage bridge was developed and turned into the actual project seen today....The ugly, mundane new bridge has already demonstrated how inferior modern bridges are. The bridge design failed to take into account the concept that Canada has a season called winter, during which it occasionally gets cold. Ice falling off the cables of the bridge has caused major traffic problems on the bridge." |
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| Trish Clark posted June 12, 1964. Today [Jun 12, 2026] marks 62 years since the original Port Mann Bridge officially opened to traffic, becoming one of the most important transportation links in British Columbia history. What made the bridge so remarkable? • Cost: $25 million (about $250 million+ in today's dollars) • Opened: June 12, 1964 • Total length: 6,900 feet (including approaches) • Main steel arch span: 1,200 feet • Height above Fraser River: 146 feet • Weight of structure: approximately 17,000 tons When it opened, it was: ✓ Canada's longest steel arch bridge ✓ The final major crossing completed on the B.C. section of the Trans-Canada Highway ✓ One of the most advanced bridge designs in North America ✓ The last major river crossing needed to complete a continuous highway route through southern British Columbia. Some fascinating details from contemporary newspaper reports: • The bridge was intentionally painted bright orange and yellow. Engineers wanted it to stand out, not blend into the landscape. • The colours were specifically chosen because the bridge was "built to be seen and remembered." • The 93-foot towers at each end were designed as gateway markers announcing the crossing. • Expansion joints allowed the bridge to grow and shrink by as much as 3½ feet between winter and summer temperatures. • The bridge featured continuous fluorescent lighting built into the handrails — a North American first that reduced glare and improved visibility in rain and fog. • The tied-arch and orthotropic plate deck design were engineering innovations rarely seen in North America at the time. • Construction involved more than a dozen major contractors and hundreds of workers over several years. • Engineers used computer-assisted calculations at UBC, something still relatively uncommon in major construction projects during the early 1960s. • The bridge's centre span was longer than the Second Narrows Bridge (today's Ironworkers Memorial Bridge). The opening itself was a major event. Provincial cabinet ministers, mayors, reeves, business leaders and transportation officials gathered on June 12, 1964, to celebrate what was seen as a symbol of British Columbia's future growth. For nearly 50 years, the giant orange arch became one of the most recognizable landmarks in the province. Millions of British Columbians crossed it on family vacations, work commutes, and road trips before the original structure was retired and replaced by the current bridge in 2012. As one Vancouver Sun headline declared before the opening: "Built to be seen and remembered." Sixty-two years later, that prediction proved remarkably accurate. 📷 Source: Vancouver Sun coverage, June 1964. |
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| Bridges Now and Then posted The Port Mann Bridge under construction, July 30, 1962, crossing British Columbia's Fraser River. (City of Richmond BC) |
I'll use removing the old bridge as a segue to the new bridge.
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| Landon Ellis commented on the above post |
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| Highway Engineering Discoveries posted British Columbia Dale Kearns: Widest bridge in the world when it was built. |
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| binnie "By 2000, the transportation infrastructure connecting Metro Vancouver was in dire need of upgrades. Part of this included the traffic on Highway 1, which had increased to the point where the Port Mann bridge was congested, in both directions for about 13 hours every weekday." (It was carrying 127,000 vehicles a day. [CanadianConsultingEngineer]) The new bridge "expanded networks for HOV, cyclists and pedestrians; and accommodated potential future rapid transit [light rail]. The new bridge is 2,020 metres long, making it the largest and longest main river-crossing span in Western Canada; and the second longest in North America." [The photo doesn't look very congested. I had a hard time finding cars on the bridge.] |
"The project included building the second-longest cable stay bridge in North America, which was recognized as the widest bridge in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records." [ConstructConnect]
The approach was built with a travelling gantry to place the precast segments. They were then post-tensioned.
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| washington.edu, p22 |
As of 2009, the project was expected to cost $2.5b and be operational by Dec 2012. [washington.edu, p2,3] I saw a figure of $800m for the bridge itself.
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| washington.edu, p8 |
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| washington.edu, p34 |
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| mainlandcm A five lane road was replaced by a ten lane road. |
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| SupremeSteel The bridge has 272 cable stays. |
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| McnaryBergeron |
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| cisc-icca "One of the other major challenges on this project was the fabrication of the eight heavy edge girders that sit on the abutments. These girders are 24 metres long, very complicated and weigh 110 tonnes. The ends of these girders are fracture critical, and to weld the thick flanges, web collars and stiffeners required a very elaborate preheat system to be used to control the duration of cool down. The welding (around the clock) and testing to the American 01.5 code were a challenge to the shop tradespeople." |
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| TargetProducts This is the grout and mixer that was used to fill the post-tensioned ducts after the cables were pulled. |
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| deal |
The bridge was a small part of the total project of carving a 10-lane road through the suburbs.
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| hatch |
The upgrade in 2001 added an eastbound HOV lane to the bridge.
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| kwhconstructors "The Original Port Mann Bridge is the most travelled bridge in Western Canada. It carries the Trans-Canada Highway over the Fraser River into the Greater Vancouver cities of Surrey and Coquitlam. Built in 1965, it was the first orthotropic deck structure built in North America. The bridge has a main span of 365m with two side spans each of 110m–the third longest arch-bridge in the world when built....the extra lane was achieved by removing the existing sidewalks and installing cantilevered steel brackets from the main girders on the approaches." |
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| tylin "A barrier-separated, 3-metre-wide bicycle-pedestrian path was included on the east side of the crossing, creating a new connection across the Fraser River for bicyclists and pedestrians. TYLin’s bridge design features two, dramatic, single mast concrete towers, which rise 160 metres over the river and house anchorages for the four planes of cables. The stay-cable system incorporates 288 cables that would extend about 45 kilometres if laid end to end....Due to the bridge location in a high seismic region, TYLin conducted rigorous seismic engineering analysis and design for the project. The bridge is founded in deep alluvium soils on 1.82-metre-diametre steel piles offshore and 2.4-metre-diametre concrete shafts onshore. Foundations were all governed by seismic loads." [I've seen each of the cable counts of 272 and 288 cables more than once.] |
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| kiewit It was a design-build project. "The new bridge has also been designed to accommodate future rapid bus and light rail transit." |
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| flatironcorp and mcnarybergeron [Both of these web pages have a few more construction photos.] |
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| Highway Engineering Discoveries posted British Columbia Highway Engineering Discoveries posted again British Columbia |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on the above post Port Mann Bridge, https://goo.gl/maps/AkiqVnowvwQnC7UJ8 |
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