Humber Bridge
The Humber Bridge, near Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, is a single-span road suspension bridge, which opened to traffic on 24 June 1981. When it opened, the bridge was the longest of its type in the world; it was not surpassed until 1998, with the completion of the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, and is now the eleventh-longest.
The bridge spans the Humber, between Barton-upon-Humber on the south bank and Hessle on the north bank, connecting the East Riding of Yorkshire with North Lincolnshire. Both sides of the bridge were in the non-metropolitan county of Humberside until its dissolution in 1996. The bridge can be seen for miles around and from as far as Patrington in the East Riding of Yorkshire and out to sea miles off the coast. It is a Grade I listed building.
By 2006, the bridge carried an average of 120,000 vehicles per week. The toll was £3.00 each way for cars, which made it the most expensive toll crossing in the United Kingdom. In April 2012, the toll was halved to £1.50 each way after the UK government deferred £150 million from the bridge's outstanding debt.
History
Before the bridge, commuters crossed the Humber on the Humber Ferry from Corporation Pier at Hull and New Holland Pier at New Holland, Lincolnshire or by road via the M62, M18 and M180 motorways, crossing the River Ouse near Goole. Until the mid-1970s, the route south was via the single-carriageway A63 and the A614.The journey was along straight single-carriageway roads across foggy moors interrupted by bottlenecks for most of the journey to Blyth, Nottinghamshire, where it met the A1, and the accident rate was high. Debates in Parliament were held on the low standard of the route across the wind-swept plains around Goole. It was not unexpected that under these conditions, a Humber Bridge, with connecting dual-carriageway approach roads and grade-separated junctions, would seem worthwhile. By the time the bridge opened, much of this inferior route had been transformed by dualling of the A63 and its bypasses, extending the M62 and the connecting of the M18 from Thorne to Wadworth. The obvious need for a Humber Bridge had been reduced by the late 1970s with the improvements of the motorway infrastructure in the region. Although welcome, these improvements detracted from the need for vehicles to cross a bridge from Hessle to Barton. The Humber Bridge was a victim of the success of the M62 before it opened. A hovercraft service, Minerva and Mercury, linked Hull Pier and Grimsby Docks from February to October 1969 but suffered relatively frequent breakdowns.
Act of Parliament
Plans for a bridge were drawn up in the 1930s and revised in 1955 but work did not begin until 27 July 1972. The Humber Bridge Act, promoted by Kingston Upon Hull Corporation, was passed in 1959. This established the Humber Bridge Board to manage and raise funds to build the bridge and buy the land required for the approach roads.1966 Kingston upon Hull North by-election
Raising funds proved impossible until the 1966 Kingston upon Hull North by-election. To save his government, Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson prevailed upon his Minister of Transport Barbara Castle to sanction the building of the bridge. Dismay at the long wait for a crossing led to Christopher Rowe writing a protest song, "The Humber Bridge".Design
The consulting engineers for the project were Freeman Fox & Partners. Sir Ralph Freeman had produced the first ideas in 1927 and in the early 1930s the cost of the project was estimated at £1.725 million and that the bridge would be unlikely to recoup the construction or maintenance costs. In 1935 he had an idea for a suspension bridge for the Humber Tunnel Executive Committee. Sir Gilbert Roberts produced more ideas in 1955 for a bridge with a central span, costing £15 million, to be paid for by East Riding County Council and Lindsey County Council. Once it was likely that a bridge would be constructed, Imperial College-educated Bernard Wex OBE produced the design in 1964 that was actually built. The bridge was built to last 120 years. In 1985 Wex was awarded the Telford Medal by the Institution of Civil Engineers. In the 1950s he had helped to design High Marnham Power Station. He was a former UK chairman of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Engineers and helped to found the Steel Construction Institute in 1976.The architect was R. E. Slater ARIBA. The administration building was designed by Parker & Rosner. The landscaping was designed by Prof Arnold Weddle. Wind tunnel testing took place at the National Maritime Institute at Teddington and the road deck is designed for wind speeds up to.
Construction
The main contractor for the steel superstructure was British Bridge Builders. The contractor for the concrete towers, anchorages and sub-structure was John Howard & Co Ltd of Chatham, Kent, who were later bought by Amec. Concrete was chosen for the towers, instead of steel, partly due to cost but also to fit the landscape.Work began on the southern approach road in July 1972 by Clugston Construction of Scunthorpe. The approach road to the A1077 junction, by Costain Civil Engineering, began in September 1976. It included a span from the southern anchorage of seven pre-stressed concrete box sections and the A1077 junction, costing £4.25 million. Work on the bridge substructure began in March 1973. To reduce heat of hydration in the concrete, which produces calcium silicate hydrate from belite, as much as 60 per cent of the Portland cement was replaced with ground granulated blast-furnace slag. It took longer to build the southern anchorage due to a diaphragm wall design due to not enough shallow bedrock. The main southern approach roads from Barton to the M180 motorway junction at Barnetby were built in the late 1970s by Clugston Construction of Scunthorpe, opening in 1978.
The towers were constructed by slipforming and the north tower was completed by May 1974. The southern foundations were completed in September 1975, with the pier completed in March 1976 and the southern tower was completed by September 1976; the bridge had been planned to open in 1976. The northern tower and anchorage was built on solid chalk but the southern tower and anchorage were built on fissured Kimmeridge Clay, from the southern shore and built with a difficult caisson design. The subcontractor for the concrete was Tileman & Co. of Shipston-on-Stour, south Warwickshire.
Cable spinning took place between September 1977 and July 1979. Each cable weighs, with 37 strands of 404 lengths of cable. The cable on the northern span has four extra strands. Each cable can take a load of. The deck is of box girder form, the box sections around each. The first box sections were assembled in June 1975 and put into the main span on 9 November 1979. The toll buildings and north approach road were built by A. F. Budge of Retford, Nottinghamshire, costing £2.9 million. Work began on the administration building in November 1976. The toll system was manufactured by Plessey Controls of Poole, Dorset. Corrosion resistance on the steelwork was provided by Camrex Corrosion of Bellshill, North Lanarkshire. The road was laid by Tarmac Roadstone of Wolverhampton with mastic asphalt. In 2017, the bridge was designated a Grade I listed building.
Opening
The bridge opened to traffic on 24 June 1981. It was opened officially by Queen Elizabeth II on 17 July 1981 a ceremony which included a prayer of dedication by the Archbishop of York and a fly-past by the Red Arrows.World record
With a centre span of and a total length of, the Humber Bridge was the longest single-span suspension bridge in the world for 17 years, until the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge opened in Japan on 5 April 1998.Local benefits
The road-distance between Hull and Grimsby fell by nearly ; the town of Scunthorpe and environs were relieved of the passing traffic between the two.Bridge statistics
The bridge's surface takes the form of a dual carriageway with a lower-level foot and cyclepath on both sides. There is a permanent speed limit on the full length of the bridge.Each tower consists of a pair of hollow vertical concrete columns, each tall and tapering from square at the base to at the top. The bridge is designed to tolerate constant motion and bends more than in winds of. The towers, although both vertical, are farther apart at the top than the bottom due to the curvature of the earth.
The total length of the suspension cable is.
The north tower is on the bank, and has foundations down to. The south tower is in the water, and descends to as a consequence of the shifting sandbanks that make up the estuary.
The bridge held the record for the world's longest single-span suspension bridge for 16 years from its opening in July 1981, until the opening of the Great Belt Bridge in June 1997, and was relegated to third place with the opening of the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge in April 1998. As of 2019 it became the eleventh longest single-span suspension bridge. The central span, at 1410 m, is the UK's longest. It remains the longest single-span suspension bridge in the world that one can cross on foot or by bicycle.
The bridge is crossed twice during the annual Humber Bridge in June half marathon and Hull Marathon in September.
Toll update project
In July 2013, work began on introducing a new electronic tolling system. The existing Humber Bridge toll system was largely the same as it was when the bridge opened in 1981, and used a computer system that was over 15 years old. This obsolete technology required an increasing amount of maintenance and needed replacing. The project to update the tolls and the resulting decrease in waiting times was welcomed by business and transport leaders.Phase one of the project focused on updating the infrastructure and saw all the toll booths replaced as well as the toll plaza canopy. Phase two concentrated on writing, testing, and setting up the new toll system. The project completed in 2015 allowing bridge users to set up an account with the bridge and pay into it. Account holders receive a device called the HumberTAG, a small electronic tag that enables the system to recognise the bridge user and the toll is automatically deducted from the user's account. The two central lanes through the plaza are free-flow lanes: they do not have any booths and account holders are able to cross the bridge without stopping.
Incidents and suicides
During construction of the bridge, the road deck sections were floated up on barges then hoisted into place by cables. During one of these lifting operations some of the cables on one of the road deck sections failed, leaving the section hanging at an angle. The section was, however, subsequently rescued and used.More than 200 incidents of people jumping or falling from the bridge have taken place since it was opened in 1981; only five have survived. Between 1990 and February 2001 the Humber Rescue Team launched its boat 64 times to deal with people falling or jumping off the bridge.
Notable incidents include the cases of a West Yorkshire woman and her two-year-old daughter who fell off the bridge in 2005, and that of a man jumping from the bridge to his death on the A63 road below in September 2006.
As a result, plans were announced on 26 December 2009 to construct a suicide barrier along the walkways of the bridge; design constraints were cited as the reason for non-implementation before this time.
In May 2017, a YouTuber with the username 'Night Scape', along with a small group, illegally scaled the bridge without safety equipment. The group of young men climbed up the structure to the top of the bridge whilst using the suspension wires as handholds. Humberside Police and the Humber Bridge Board are reviewing the security measures.
Finances
The bridge has a toll charge of £1.50 for cars since 1 April 2012, until when for six months it was £3 and the only trunk road British toll bridge to charge motorcycles. In 2004 many motorcyclists held a slow-pay protest, taking off gloves and helmets and paying the toll in large denomination bank notes. Police reported, thereby, a tailback of.In 1996 Parliament passed the Humber Bridge Act 1996 to reorganise the Board's debts to ensure the bridge could be safely maintained. Much of the debt was interest-suspended and deferred in that refinancing which saw no write off — the balance was to be paid down as toll users through the Board paid it off.
In 2006 a Humber Bridge Bill was tabled by Cleethorpes's Labour MP Shona McIsaac relating to the Humber Bridge.
This would have made amendments to the Act of 1959 "requiring the Secretary of State to give directions to members of the Humber Bridge Board regarding healthcare and to review the possibility of facilitating journeys across the Humber Bridge in relation to healthcare". The aim was to allow patients travelling between the banks for medical treatment to cross without paying the toll, and to allow the Secretary of State for Transport to appoint two members of the Board to represent the interests of the NHS. Even though the Bill received cross-party support it ran out of time later that year.
A protest at the bridge on 1 September 2007 was supported by the local Cancer Patients Involvement Group, the Road Haulage Association, Yorkshire and Humberside MEP Diana Wallis and local business and council representatives. The government responded to the petition on 14 January 2008, stating that "Concessions or exemptions from tolls on the Humber Bridge are a matter for the Humber Bridge Board."
In October 2008, a joint campaign was launched by the Scunthorpe Telegraph, Hull Daily Mail and Grimsby Telegraph to abolish the toll. The papers' A Toll Too Far campaign garnered much support from councillors and MPs serving Lincolnshire and Humberside and was launched in response to a mooted increase in the toll. The campaign's aim was not only to stave off any potential increase but ultimately to see it abolished. A reduction to £1 was a sought-after alternative. Thousands of readers backed the campaign with a paper and an online petition.
A public inquiry into the tolls was held in March 2009 by independent inspector Neil Taylor. In July 2009, the Department for Transport announced that it had decided not to allow the proposed increase. Transport Minister Sadiq Khan said he did not believe it was right for the tolls to be raised in the current economic climate. In October 2009, the government approved a £6 million grant for maintenance costs, which meant that there would be no toll increase before 2011 at the earliest, by which time tolls would have been frozen for five years.
The Board applied again to the Department of Transport in September 2010, to raise the tolls from April 2011, but the Government ordered a public inquiry to be held into the application. A three-day public inquiry was held in Hull in early March 2011.
Following the recommendation by the planning inspector the Government gave approval, on 14 June 2011, for the increase to go ahead. The toll was raised on 1 October 2011, at which point it became the most expensive in the United Kingdom. The Severn Bridge/Second Severn Crossing charged £5.70, but only Wales-bound.
In the 2011 Autumn Statement on 29 November, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced that the Government had agreed to reduce the debt on the bridge by £150 million, which would allow the toll for cars to be halved to £1.50. Following the government accepting the agreement, between the four local councils, to meet a portion of the debt if revenues proved insufficient Transport Secretary Justine Greening confirmed the reduction on 29 February 2012, with effect from April.