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Saturday, June 6, 2009

Auckland Harbour Bridge Moveable Lane Barrier.


This fifity year old lady is photographed from Mt Eden Volcano, and is an icon of Auckland.



Auckland Harbour Bridge, 

The bridge has a length of 1,020 m (3,348 ft), with a main span of 243.8 m, rising 43.27 m above high water allowing ships access to the deepwater wharf. It has undergone transformation with  two-lane box girder clip-on sections were added to each side in 1969, ten years after it was built. It doubled the number of lanes to eight. The sections were manufactured by Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries of Japan. People fondly called the new lanes as 'Nippon clip-ons'. 

The Moveable Lane Barrier - the first ever permanent lane barrier system on a major bridge anywhere in the world - was introduced to manage traffic flows in a 'tidal' morning and evening peak system.

In the morning, the traffic is busy coming into the city. After work, the direction is reversed. In 1990, this giant machine was installed to move these heavy block dividers.There were "elephant houses" or giant sheds at the end of the bridge. This daily changing of lanes have intriqued tourist.

After twenty years, this orange machine is transfered to extend Auckland's motorway network. They are replaced by new sleek white machines which do the job twice as fast as the old machine.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

She is a venerable old lady indeed :-)

I used to live in Auckland many years ago. I often drove over the bridge. I've been here in the US for 13 years and just before I left NZ, I spent a week in Auckland. I got totally lost trying to drive across the bridge, as they have changed the access quite a bit :-)

Re your questions... my film camera is a Olympus 35 mm SLR ...it's one of the OM series ...an OM-G to be exact.

I also have a digital camera and use both of them. What I do like about the film camera is that it does teach you many of the basics of photography ...like film speeds, depth of field, apertures, etc.

The building in the rain photo, is indeed a school. :-)
That period instead of full stop thing, gets me as well. Here is the US they use 'period'. Which had me very confused when someone said to me, not long after getting here 'You forgot your period'. I thought they were being a bit peronal, until I realised they meant full stop.:-)