Pitt River Bridge
The Pitt River Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge that spans the Pitt River between Port Coquitlam and Pitt Meadows in British Columbia, Canada. The bridge is part of Highway 7, carrying Lougheed Highway across the river. The current bridge opened on October 4, 2009. The bridge includes a cable-stay bridge structure, of multi-span approaches, a interchange structure, and approximately of grade construction. Total project cost for the bridge was $200 million.
Previous bridges
Three road bridges have existed before the modern bridges' construction. The first road bridge was completed in 1915 and opened on the 1st or 2nd of March. It cost $800,000. This first road bridge was originally the second Canadian Pacific Railway bridge over the Pitt River, a swing bridge that opened in 1907 to replace the original 1880s rail bridge. CPR decided to replace that single-track railway bridge with a new double-track railway bridge. CPR then sold the existing 1907 bridge to the province of British Columbia, which floated that bridge a small distance upstream and converted it into the original road crossing. Before its construction, traffic utilized a government-subsidized ferry, which had started its operation on 27 September 1902.The second span, a highway bridge was opened on 21 October, 1957 by Premier W. A. C. Bennett and cost $1,050,000. The original Pitt River road bridge was purchased by the Western Canada Steel company and floated downstream along the Fraser River to connect Vancouver and Richmond, BC with its plant on Twigg Island as a road-rail bridge.
The third span was built in the 1978 at cost of $2.8 million dollars and was opened on 1 August by Highways Minister Alex Fraser. It was located to the north of the 1957 bridge.
The mid-swing span of the south span sometimes did not seat properly in the closed position, becoming stuck and causing very long traffic line-ups, but this problem was fixed many years ago. The control house also operated the lane control system after the system became operational.
Each of the two spans had two lanes. In 1997 a counterflow system was installed, being completed on the 10th of October. During the morning and evening commute times, the system would reverse a lane on one of the two bridges so that three lanes of traffic were operational in a single direction. In vogue with the Massey Tunnel's system, the system directed three lanes towards Vancouver in the morning from 6 AM until 8:30 AM, and likewise from 3:30 PM until 6:00 PM towards Maple Ridge.