Fotoeins Fotografie

Fotoeins Friday: Three golden crossings over the Fraser River

By HL fotoeins on 26 Dec 2014

The greater Vancouver area is best known for its proximity to mountains and to the sea. What is often forgotten are the number of bridges and crossings across both Burrard Inlet and the Fraser River.

From the north flank of the Fraser River in the city of New Westminster, these three bridges are in view, beautifully illuminated here in the light of a winter day’s sunset. As shown above, the bridges from “top to bottom” (with increasing distance from my vantage point) are the Translink SkyBridge, the Pattullo bridge, and the Fraser River Swing Bridge, connecting New Westminster with Surrey on the other side of the river.

Completed in 1989, the Translink Skybridge is a cable-stayed transit-only bridge, carrying three tracks for the Skytrain automated rapid-transit system between Columbia and Scott Road stations. The Skybridge is also the world’s longest cable-supported transit-only bridge.

Since 1937, the Pattullo Bridge has been an important traffic link for light and heavy vehicles over the Fraser River. A beautiful classic, the Pattullo Bridge’s main span is a steel-trussed through-arch, and remains as one of the oldest surviving bridges in the greater Vancouver area. What’s more is that the Pattullo Bridge’s main span is very similar to the span for the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The Fraser River Swing Bridge is a low-level railroad through-truss swing-bridge built in 1904. This bridge also served highway traffic until the Pattullo bridge was built three decades later. The bridge is now used exclusively by rail traffic.

I made the photo above from Westminster Pier Park in New Westminster, BC, Canada on 25 January 2013. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com.