Poole Lifting Bridge - Poole Harbour, Poole, Dorset, UK
Posted by: 
Dragontree
N 50° 42.756 W 001° 59.567
30U E 571111 N 5618349
Poole's original bridge over the water of Poole Harbour.
Waymark Code: WM4VEH
Location: Southern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 10/01/2008
Views: 17
This large, substantial road bridge carries traffic over the harbour between Holes Bay and the main water area. It is a lifting bridge near the Sunseeker factory and the main ferry terminal.
The Borough of Poole website describes the bridge:
visit link
'The existing Poole lifting bridge was built in 1926. At the time, it was regarded as a state-of-the-art engineering solution to the challenge of providing a road link across a busy shipping channel.
Some interesting facts about the Poole lifting bridge:
The existing lifting bridge was built in 1927 and is the third to be located on the site.
It has 7 time-tabled lifts a day and another 10 unscheduled lifts for commercial boats.
It has provided an estimated 400,000 lifts since it first opened in 1927.
Some of the rules for the bridge date back to William IV's reign.
The most road traffic recorded over the bridge was 22,000 vehicles a day, in 1988. The Holes Bay Road has taken some traffic off, and typical flows are now 20,000 vehicles a day.
Boat traffic is very seasonal - in winter there may be less than 10 boats a day, on peak summer weekends, over 300.
The average lift is 6 minutes, but on peak summer weekends the bridge may be up for 35 minutes.
The bridge is a public highway, free to users. However bridges that stood there before 1927 were privately owned toll bridges.
The two halves of the deck weigh 180 tonnes each - but they are so well balanced that they can be lifted by hand.'