WATCH ABOVE: The final leg of dismantling the Port Mann Bridge can begin now after the gantry crane has been removed. Brian Coxford reports.
VANCOUVER – It has been the magic piece, the single most important element contributing to the construction of the second largest and longest cable-supported bridge in North America.
You have probably seen it if you’ve driven across the Port Mann Bridge recently. It is the long, yellow and horizontal crane that has done all the heavy lifting.
Over the last couple of weeks, in the middle of the night, the giant yellow gantry has been at work, lifting 80-tonne pre-fab sections of the unfinished part of the bridge on the Surrey side.
Now having finished its work after four-and-a-half years, the job is done and the gantry has been dismantled and lifted off the bridge.
While the final stages of the bridge construction is completed, the gantry will be taken apart and re-purposed.
“The gantry’s come down so that means the biggest parts have been moved on the bridge,” said Greg Johnson from Transportation Investment Corp. “There’s still a lot more work to be done, the paving, a ceiling, even line markings. All that stuff we’re aiming to have done by the end of the year but it’s really dependent on good weather.”
“We need good, dry weather in order to get that stuff done so the schedule’s really going to depend on that.”
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