Narrows Bridge

The Narrows Bridge is a freeway and railway crossing of the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia.

Made up of two road bridges and a railway bridge constructed at a part of the river known as the Narrows, located between Mill Point and Point Lewis, it connects the Mitchell and Kwinana Freeways, linking the city's northern and southern suburbs. The original road bridge was opened in 1959 and was the largest precast prestressed concrete bridge in the world. Construction of the northern interchange for this bridge necessitated the reclamation of a large amount of land from the river.

The bridge formed part of the Kwinana Freeway which originally ran for only 2.4 miles (3.9 km) to Canning Bridge. Over the following decades, the freeway system was expanded to the north and south, greatly increasing the volume of traffic using the bridge. As a result, in 2001, a second road bridge was opened to the west of the original bridge, and in 2005, the railway bridge was constructed in the gap between the two traffic bridges. Passenger trains first traversed the Narrows in 2007 with the opening of the Mandurah railway line.

Railway bridge: 2005

Narrows Rail BridgeCoordinates31°57′48″S 115°50′49″E / 31.9633°S 115.8469°E / -31.9633; 115.8469CarriesSouthbound railway lineCrossesSwan RiverCharacteristicsNo. Of spans5Piers in water2HistoryOpened23 December 2007; 13 years ago (2007-12-23)Location

During the construction of the second road bridge, the construction of a railway through Perth's southern suburbs to Rockingham and Mandurah became a political issue. The incumbent Liberal state government proposed building a railway from Kenwick to connect to the Kwinana Freeway, running in the centre of the freeway for only part of ist journey. The Labor opposition instead wanted to build the railway across the Narrows Bridge and down most of the length of the freeway.

After the Labor party won the 2001 state election, it reversed the previous government's position and started planning for the installation of railway tracks across the Narrows Bridge. The construction of a third bridge was needed due to the lack of previous planning provisions when the second bridge was constructed. Leighton Constructions won the contract to build the freeway stage of the railway line and set about constructing a narrow southbound railway bridge in the 6-metre (20 ft) gap between the existing road bridges. The designers of "Package E" of the Southern Suburbs Railway (which included the Narrows Rail Bridge) were GHD, Coffey Geosciences and Wyche Consulting. The eastern side of the existing northbound (2001) bridge was also strengthened to accommodate the northbound railway track. Construction was due to start in July 2005 and completion was expected by December 2005. The first passengers traversed the Narrows on 23 December 2007 with the opening of the Mandurah Railway Line.

The railway bridge deck was made from nine steel girders each weighing up to 99.5 tonnes (219,000 lb) and up to 54 metres (177 ft) long. These girders were built in Kwinana, brought to the site by road and lowered into position with a crane.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Narrows Bridge (Perth)" and modified on February 10, 2021 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.