Sydney Harbour Bridge

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is one of the major landmarks of Sydney, Australia, connecting the Sydney central business district (CBD) with the North Shore commercial and residential areas, both of which are located on Sydney Harbour. The dramatic water vista of the bridge together with the nearby Sydney Opera House is an iconic image of both Sydney and Australia. The bridge is also known as “the Coathanger” on account of its arch-based design, although that name is hardly referred to by locals.

The bridge was the city’s tallest structure until 1967. According to Guinness World Records, it is the widest long-span bridge in the world. It is the world’s largest single-arch bridge, but not the longest (as millions of Australian school children were erroneously taught). The Bayonne Bridge in the United States, opened four months earlier on 15 November 1931, is 2.3 feet (70 cm) longer.

The design bears a marked resemblance to that of the New York Hell Gate Bridge. Its design was later used as a basis for the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

Description

The bridge’s two ends are located in at Dawes Point (in Sydney’s Rocks area) and Milsons Point (in Sydney’s lower North Shore area). It carries six lanes of road traffic on its main roadway, two lanes of road traffic (formerly two tram tracks) and a footpath on its eastern side, and two railway tracks and a bicycle path along its western side.

The road across the bridge is known as the Bradfield Highway and is about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long, making it one of the shortest highways in Australia. (The shortest, also called the Bradfield Highway, is found on the Story Bridge in Brisbane). At 151.3 feet (48.8 m) wide, it is the widest bridge in the world (Guinness World Records, 2004).

The bridge deck portion of the highway is 0.71 miles (1.1497 km) long. It is concrete and lies on trimmers (beams that run along the length of the bridge). The trimmers themselves rest on steel beams that run along the width of the bridge. The trimmers and beams are visible to boats that pass underneath the bridge.

The arch is composed of two 28-panel arch trusses. Their heights vary from 55.8 feet (18 m) at the center of the arch to 176.7 feet (57 m) (beside the pylons).

The arch span is 1,559 feet (503 m) and the weight of the steel arch is 39,000 tons. The arch’s summit is 415.4 feet (134 m) above mean sea level, though it can increase by as much as seven inches (180 mm) on hot days as the result of steel expanding in heat. Two large metal hinges at the base of the bridge accommodate these expansions and contractions and thereby prevent the arch from being damaged.

The two pairs of pylons at each end are about 276 feet (89 m) high and are made of concrete and granite. Abutments, which support the ends of the bridge, are contained at the base of the pylons. They prevent the bridge from stretching or compressing due to temperature variations. Otherwise, the pylons serve no structural purpose and are primarily to visually balance the bridge itself. They were originally not part of the design but were added later to allay concerns about structural integrity - ironically, as the pylons do not actually touch the bridge (except at road level). Although inserted into the designs for their aesthetic value all four pylons have now been put to use, a museum and tourist centre with a lookout of the harbour is contained in the south eastern pylon. The south western pylon is used by the New South Wales traffic authority as a base for their cctv cameras overlooking the bridge and the roads around that area. The two pylons on the north shore are now venting chimneys for fumes from the tunnel under the harbour.

The steel used for the bridge was largely imported. About 79% came from Redcar in the North East of Britain, the rest was Australian-made. The granite used was quarried in Moruya, New South Wales, and the concrete used was also Australian made.

The total weight of the bridge is 52,800 tonnes, and six million hand-driven rivets hold the bridge together.

Access

From the Sydney CBD side, motor vehicle access to the bridge is normally via Grosvenor Street, Clarence Street, Kent Street, the Cahill Expressway, or the Western Distributor. Drivers on the northern side will find themselves on the Warringah Freeway, though it is easy to turn off the freeway to drive westwards into North Sydney or eastwards to Neutral Bay and beyond upon arrival on the northern side.

Pedestrian access from the northern side involves climbing an easily-spotted flight of stairs at Milsons Point. Pedestrian access on the southern side is more complicated, but signposts in the Rocks area now direct pedestrians to the long and sheltered flight of stairs that leads to the bridge’s southern end. These stairs are located near Gloucester Street and Cumberland Street in the Sydney Rocks area.

The bridge can also be accessed from the south by getting on Cahill Walk, which runs along the Cahill Expressway. Pedestrians can access this walkway from Circular Quay by a flight of stairs, or a lift, alternately it can be accessed from The Botanical Gardens.

Since 1998, BridgeClimb has made it possible for tourists to climb the southern half of the bridge. Tours run at dawn, throughout the day, and at twilight.

The bridge lies between Milsons Point and Wynyard railway stations, located on the north and south shores respectively, with two train lines running along the western side of the bridge. Both stations are part of the North Shore line.

Tolls

To travel across the bridge there is a toll for vehicles of AUD$3.00. This toll is only charged for traffic headed into the CBD (southbound). No toll is charged for any other northbound traffic.

There are toll plazas at the northern and southern ends. The eastern-most southbound lanes (which continue over the Cahill Expressway after leaving the bridge) have their tollbooths at the northern end of the bridge, with the remainder being at the southern end of the bridge.

The toll was originally placed on bridge travel, in both direction, to recoup the cost of its construction. This cost was recovered in the 1980’s but the toll has been kept (indeed increased) as the State Government’s main roads infrastructure department (the RTA) does not want to lose the significant amounts of revenue the bridge brings in.

When the decision to build the Sydney Harbour Tunnel was made in the early 80’s, the toll was increased from 20 cents to $1, $1.50 then $2 by the time the Tunnel opened, to pay for its construction. The Tunnel also had an initial toll of $2 southbound. After the increase to $1, the concrete barrier on the Bridge separating the Bradfield Highway from the Cahill Expressway was increased in height, due to the large numbers of drivers crossing it illegally from lane 7 to 6, so they could avoid the toll. The Toll was increased to $3 around 2004 to penalize drivers of SUVs (who mostly live north of the city) for the extra damage they inflict on Sydney’s roads. This was met with similar protests from communities north of the city as were earlier increases.

Use of the bridge by bicycle riders (provided that they use the cycleway) and pedestrians is free.

History

Planning

The building of the current bridge can be said to have started in 1890, when a royal commission determined that there was a heavy level of ferry traffic in the Sydney Harbour area, best relieved with the construction of a bridge. Vehicular access to the north shore was undertaken with a series of smaller bridges located further westwards in the harbour, but this was insufficient for the traffic in the Sydney/North Sydney area.

Designs and proposals were requested in 1900, but a formal proposal was not accepted until 1911. In 1912, John Bradfield was appointed chief engineer of the bridge project, which also had to include a railway. He completed a formal design - the now familiar single arch shape - in 1916, but plans to implement the design were postponed until 1922, primarily because of World War I.

In November 1922 the NSW parliament passed laws that allowed the bridge’s construction. Construction tenders for the bridge were requested the same year, and the British firm Dorman Long and Co Ltd, Middlesbrough won. To offset concerns about a foreign firm participating in the project, assurances were given by Bradfield that the workforce building the bridge would all be Australians.

The building of the bridge coincided with the construction of a system of underground railways in Sydney’s CBD, known today as the City Circle, and the bridge was designed with this in mind. The bridge was designed to carry six lanes of road traffic, flanked by two railway tracks and a footpath on each side. Both sets of rail tracks were linked into the underground Wynyard railway station, on the south side of the bridge, by symmetrical ramps and tunnels. The eastern-side railway tracks were intended for use by a planned rail link to the Northern Beaches; in the interim they were to be used to carry trams from the North Shore into a terminal within Wynyard station.

Construction

The building of the bridge was under the management of Bradfield. Three other persons were involved in the bridge’s design and construction: Laurence Ennis, the engineer-in-charge at Dorman Long and Co was the main supervisor (Bradfield visited occasionally throughout the project, and in particular at the many key stages of the project, to inspect progress and make managerial decisions); Edward Judge was Chief Technical Engineer of Dorman Long and later became President of the British Iron and Steel Federation; Sir Ralph Freeman was hired by the company to design the accepted model in further detail. Later a bitter disagreement broke out between Bradfield and Freeman as to who actually designed the bridge. Another name connected with the bridge’s design is that of Arthur Plunkett.

The construction project itself began in 1923, with the demolition of 800 homes. The owners of these homes received compensation, but their occupants did not.

The first stage of the bridge project was the building of two worksheds at Milson’s Point to assist in building the bridge - the light and heavy workshops. Their purpose was to build the bridge’s many parts.

The first sod for the bridge was turned that same year. In January 1925, the excavations to build the abutments and approach spans began. In October 1925, the building of the abutments and approach spans themselves began, and these were completed in September 1928. Construction of the bridge itself began in December 1928, with the construction of the bridge parts in the workshops.

Construction of the arch of the bridge began in 1929, with two separate teams building the arch on each side using creeper cranes. The first panel was erected on the southern side in March 1929. The southern end of the bridge was worked on a month ahead of the northern end, in order to detect any errors and to ensure that they did not happen on the northern side.

During construction the two halves of the arch were held up by numerous support cables. Once the arch halves were completed the cables were slowly released to bring the two halves of the arch together. This was finalised on the afternoon of 19 August 1930. Ennis and four associates personally witnessed this whilst standing on top of the bridge. Following a parting that occurred due to the contracting of metal in the evening, the ends were rejoined at 10 pm, and have remained joined since then. The support cables were then surplus to the design and removed. They were subsequently used to provide the support cables for the Walter Taylor Bridge, over the Brisbane River in the western suburbs of Brisbane, Queensland.

The road and the two sets of tram and railway tracks were completed in 1931. Power and telephone lines, and water, gas and drainage pipes were also all added to the bridge in that year. On 19 January 1932, the first test train, a steam locomotive, safely crossed the bridge. About 90 others also crossed the bridge in the months that followed as part of a series of tests to ensure the bridge’s safety.

The construction worksheds were demolished after the bridge was completed, and the land that they were on is now occupied by Luna Park and the North Sydney swimming pool.

The standards of industrial safety during construction were poor by today’s standards. Sixteen workers died during construction, mainly from falling off the bridge. Several more were injured from unsafe working practices undertaken whilst heating and constructing its rivets, and deafness experienced by many of the workers in later years was blamed on the project.

The total financial cost of the bridge was £10,057,170 7 shillings and 9 pence (double the original quote). This was not paid off in full until 1988.

Opening of the bridge

The bridge was formally opened on 19 March 1932. Amongst those who attended and gave speeches were the State Governor, Sir Philip Game, the Minister for Public Works, and Ennis. The Premier of NSW, Labor politician Jack Lang, was to open the bridge by cutting a ribbon at its southern end. However, just as he was about to do so, a man in military uniform moved forward on horseback and slashed the ribbon with a sword, declaring the bridge to be open “in the name of the decent and respectable citizens of New South Wales”. He was promptly arrested, identified as Francis de Groot, and later convicted of offensive behaviour. The ribbon was hurriedly retied and Lang performed the official opening ceremony. After he did so, there was a 21-gun salute and a RAAF fly-past.

De Groot was not a member of the regular Army but his uniform allowed him to blend in with the real cavalry. He was a member of a right-wing paramilitary group called the New Guard, opposed to Lang’s leftist policies. This incident was one of several that Lang had with the New Guard in that year.

A similar ribbon-cutting ceremony on the bridge’s northern side by North Sydney’s mayor, Alderman Primrose, was carried out without incident. It was later discovered that Primrose was also a New Guard member, but his role in and knowledge of the de Groot incident, if any, are unclear.

A message from a primary school in Tottenham, 340 miles (550 km) away in rural NSW, arrived at the bridge on the day and was presented at the opening ceremony. It had been carried all the way from Tottenham to the bridge by relays of school children, with the final relay being run by two children from the nearby Fort Street Boys’ and Girls’ schools.

Other features of the opening ceremony included a vast display of floats and marching bands - one quite remarkable by Depression standards. The public was allowed to walk on the highway.

There had been numerous preparatory arrangements. On 14 March 1932, three postage stamps were issued to commemorate the imminent opening of the bridge. One of these stamps, with a face value of five shillings, is worth several hundred dollars today.

Several songs were also composed in advance for the occasion. These have now been largely lost or forgotten. The bridge itself was regarded as a triumph over Depression times.

Since the opening

Since the opening, the bridge has been the focal point of much tourism and national pride. It is Sydney’s focal point of New Year and Australia Day celebrations, with fireworks being set off from the arch. Tragically, it has also been the scene of about 40 suicides, many of which took place within months of the bridge’s opening, during the Great Depression.

In 1958 tram services across the bridge were withdrawn and the tracks they had used were removed and replaced by two extra road lanes; these lanes are now the leftmost southbound lanes on the bridge and are still clearly distinguishable from the other six road lanes. They connect the bridge to the elevated Cahill Expressway that carries traffic to the Eastern Distributor. The Bridge originally only had four wider traffic lanes occupying the central space which now has six, as photos taken soon after the opening clearly show. The width of the lanes now is so small that buses passing each other in adjacent lanes do so a few inches apart.

In 1982, the bridge celebrated the 50th anniversary of its opening. Once again, the bridge was closed to vehicles and pedestrians allowed full access for the day. The celebrations were attended by Edward Judge, who represented Dorman Long. Australia’s bicentennial celebrations on 26 January 1988 attracted large crowds in the bridge’s vicinity.

Sydney Harbour Tunnel and recent years

Also in 1988, work began to build a tunnel to complement the bridge. It was determined that the bridge could no longer support the increased traffic flow of the 1980s. The Sydney Harbour Tunnel was completed in August 1992. It is intended only for use by motor vehicles. Before it was officially opened for use, the tunnel was made open for pedestrian access, with persons on that day able to walk down the tunnel’s roadway.

In May 2000 the bridge was closed to vehicular access for a day to allow a special reconciliation march - the “Walk for Reconciliation” - to take place. This was part of a response to an Aboriginal “Stolen Generation” inquiry, which found widespread suffering had taken place amongst Australian Aboriginal children forcibly placed into the care of white parents in a little-publicised state government scheme. A large number of Australians walked the bridge in a symbolic gesture of crossing a divide.

During the Sydney 2000 Olympics in September and October 2000, the bridge was adorned with the Olympic Rings. It was included in the Olympic torch’s route to the Olympic stadium. The men’s and women’s Olympic marathon events likewise included the bridge as part of their route to the Olympic stadium. A massive fireworks display at the end of the closing ceremony ended at the bridge. The East-facing side of the bridge has been used several times since as a framework from which to hang static fireworks, especially during the elaborate New Year’s Eve displays.

The first complete repainting for many years is now underway. The task requires that each section being painted be sealed off and blasted to remove old paint which is vacuumed out. This process is required as the current layer is lead paint which must not be allowed to fall into the harbour. A reason for the repainting is the concern that weight of the many layers of paint acquired over the years may have a destructive effect on the bridge’s structure.

Security on the bridge has recently been introduced, due to the heightened risk of terrorist attack.Linking the city with North Sydney, it carries eight lanes of road traffic and two railway tracks which form part of the city’s rail suburban network.

While it has a pair of granite clad pylons at each end, they are actually there for show and do not support the great arch which is 530 metres (1650 feet) long and connected to huge hinges tied to bedrock at either end - technically Dawes Point in the south and Milsons Point in the north.

The road and railway track actually hangs from the arch, 59 metres (194 feet) above sea level. Where the Golden Gate suspension system loops down to the centre, the Sydney Harbour Bridge loops up.

At its highest point, the arch is 134 metres above sea level. Taking into account the road approaches, ‘the bridge’ is 1150 metres or about a mile long. There are 58,000 tons of steel in the bridge, the arch of which was built from both ends and met in the middle.

Steel supports for the road and rail platform were ‘hung’ beginning at the middle to the pylons. Its two eastern lanes were originally tram tracks, converted when Sydney abolished its trams in the 1950s. The main arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge is about two feet shorter than the main span of the Golden Gate.

Before it opened, its entire length was packed with railway carriages, trams and buses to test its ability to support a total traffic jam. It was designed to withstand winds of 200 kilometres and hour, which are cyclonic (hurricane) in force and have never been recorded in Sydney.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge has become a major adventure with the opening in 1998 of Bridge Climb, a company which conducts tours over the arch. Clad in overalls and clipped to a safety line, you can walk and climb 1500 metres over the arch.

A challenge for the faint-hearted, the traverse attracted thousands of people in its first year. The climb is open to anyone over 12 who is fit enough to handle some steep climbs on metal ladders and can cope with heights.

The south-east pylon of the bridge includes a lookout for the less adventurous. It includes an exhibition explaining the construction and history of the bridge and offers great views of Sydney Harbour. The entrance is from Cumberland Street at the edge of The Rocks, close to the Shangri-La Hotel.

There are about 200 steps to the lookout, which is enough of a challenge for some. Open daily, The Pylon Lookout is one of Sydney’s oldest tourist attractions.