Abridged

Sam and I attended to "moving of the new pedestrian bridge" in Burnaby last night at around 1 AM. This bridge was built in the north side of Highway 1, right beside Burnaby Lake, which is where we watched from. The goal was to swing it into position crossing Highway 1, which was - almost unbelievably, I don't think I have ever heard of such a thing! - completely closed from 8 PM unti 6 AM. Total cost; $21M.

There were dozens of heavy equipment trucks and maybe 100 workers on site, almost all of whom were basically watching, as far as we could tell. They heavy lifting, pun intended, was done by two of these machines, the cost of which which must be incredible. One was attached to each end of the bridge and they inched along at about .001 KPH to move it into place. The guy on the right of this picture was driving it from a remote control. The 96 wheels swung 90 degrees to achieve the required motion.

This project also required pouring and compacting an unbelievable volume of gravel onto the highway surface and then removing it again by morning - hence the presence of so many trucks and workers, I guess. This seemed to be to deal with a 2' (or so) difference in height between the two sides of the highway, along which most of the movement happened. 

I also guess they ran into SOME issues because highway is apparently still closed, ETA 9 AM (was scheduled to reopen at 6 AM). No doubt someone's blood pressure has been very high all morning.

Very interesting, very fun, very cool. Also very COLD !