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Originally Posted by Djeffery
I think trying to put a 2 way traffic bridge there would be a huge waste of money. It would cost several times what this one is going to cost and all it will do is funnel traffic onto Wharncliffe that could otherwise just as easily get there by crossing at Queens. What's it been, 10 years now or something that it's been closed? I don't think many people have missed it. Let's not forget that the east approach to the bridge won't meet current roadway standards, so trying to align that angle would be hugely expensive, which is why rebuilding the old bridge makes sense.
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The last time I drove across the bridge was, as far as I recall, November of 2012, when I was in 4th year university. I seem to remember it being open to vehicular traffic in April of 2013, but then closed later in the summer. So my guess is that it was closed between May and July of 2013. Not exactly the recent past. But, with all due respect to Pink Floyd, we have not exactly woken up to find ten years has got behind us. Insofar as building another crossing goes, London has a serious shortage of river crossings as it stands, so having another crossing midway cannot hurt. I know I was always very frustrated trying to get downtown in the morning, because your choices are a) Oxford catastrophe or b) Riverside boondoggle
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Originally Posted by Stevo26
Rehabilitating yet again a bridge as old as this and expecting it to carry all manner of pedestrian and vehicular traffic strikes me as rather stupid. It looks like the city are going to simply build a modern bridge and then use the still-viable parts of the original bridge as decoration.
Sometimes the city has a bad habit of hanging on to heritage artifacts that are no longer capable of being restored to any level of viability, all in an effort to get the heritage activists to shut up. Or they resort to constructing an ersatz version of the original that ends up looking rather tasteless, viz., the now-Budweiser Gardens/former JLC. Again to placate the axe-grinders.
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But this bridge is pretty special; it's a bowstring truss. As far as I know, there are very, very few of these anywhere in the world. Using bits of the truss as decoration on a modern bridge would be tacky and an affront to the historical value of the original structure. Also, the "heritage activists" have nothing to do with this since the bridge is protected under the Ontario Heritage Act, not the Minutes of the Fifth General Meeting of the London Heritage Ragtag Team.