The Northern Spire bridge in Sunderland opened to traffic today.
The cable stayed bridge across the River Wear is the first to be built on the river in over 40 years. Although set with an original opening date of May, poor weather conditions in the early months of 2018 led to the £117.6 million project being delayed.
The bridge has a 105 metre tall central A-frame pylon and is the tallest structure in the North East.
It it hoped that the bridge will reduce congestion in the city, open up land for regeneration along the river, improve links between the A19 road and Sunderland city centre and the Port of Sunderland, whilst also boosting the economy and helping to create an estimated 6,000 jobs in the area.
More than 2,000 people have worked on the bridge during the last three years of construction, clocking up a million work-hours.
The day before it opened to traffic there was a pedestrian ‘walk-over’ event lasting several hours giving members of the public the chance to walk across the bridge.
Below are a selection of picture from the last two days and please feel free to follow the link to a blog post I did as the central pylon was lifted into position back in February 2017: Room2850 – Building Bridges
Images (c) Ian Forsyth / Getty Images
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