Jolyon Gill

Sad news to report - Jolyon Gill, an independent UK bridge engineering consultant who I'm sure several of my readers will know, died yesterday, of a stroke.

Gill worked for Freeman Fox and Partners, the renowned long span bridge designers, and was head of their successor Hyder's special structures group until 2001. He then moved to Faber Maunsell (now part of Aecom) to become their UK head of bridges and special structures. In 2003, a "reappraisal of business objectives" led to his departure, to set up his own firm Jolyon Gill Consultancy Ltd. He was always active in the wider bridge engineering community, for example working on the second edition of the IStructE's guidance manual for bridge access gantries, and serving on the Editorial Advisory Panel for the ICE's Bridge Engineering Journal.

I mentioned him briefly here on a previous occasion, for his talk at a symposium on learning from bridge failures. He struck me as someone both with a sound grasp of the way in which the wider world impacts upon the purely technical, as well as a desire to move beyond conventional wisdom.

Bridge of the month

There's already a Bridge of the Month competition which you should take a look at it if you haven't already.

Now there's a new Bridge of the Month newsletter, from Bill Harvey, the masonry arch bridge specialist perhaps best known for his Archie-M arch analysis software. The first issue is available online [PDF] and features Llanelltyd Bridge. It discusses the geometry of the arch, the difference between a three-centred and an elliptical arch, and the difficulty of modelling and hence analysing a bridge with irregular, distorted arch geometry.

You can subscribe to receive future newsletters at http://eepurl.com/ccAyL.

Bridges news roundup

Research seeks design guidelines for composite bridges
Researchers in Bristol carrying out prototype tests on bridges with precast beams and polymer composite "slab".

Iconic new bridge could be built in Rhyl next year
Foryd Harbour Bridge competition winning design now submitted for planning consent.

Derry peace bridge ready for May
£13m suspension bridge held up by bad weather.

Miraculous escape after lorry flips over on bridge and is held upside down over 200ft drop ... by a single punctured tyre
I am not normally a reader of the Daily Mail, but had to share this, the pictures are great!

2011 China Bridge trip

Now, this sounds like just the most fantastic holiday ever, for a pontist so deeply committed as to be practically certifiable.

Eric Sakowski, of the great website highestbridges.com, is organising a three-week trip to China to visit dozens of bridges including the eight highest spans in the world, and many more truly spectacular structures, often in remote parts of the country that Westerners almost never visit.

The tour runs from 5-26 August 2011, and costs less than US$4,000.

Eric's trip preview really has to be read to be believed, and his advice for anyone else looking to make a similar trip is also well worth reading.

Sadly, the Happy Pontist won't be going.

Blogwatch

Time is still keeping me from longer posts, so instead, what are the other bridges blogs up to?

Bridge Photo of the Day has returned after an absence of several months, with a series of wintry Alaskan bridges, although sadly it looks like the archive of photos from before their hiatus has disappeared.

My perennial favourite, Tabikappa, seems to visit an inexhaustible supply of interesting bridges in Japan, particularly pedestrian suspension bridges. There was a series of great postings on particularly ramshackle examples that I've mentioned before, but more recent ones have included several unusual asymmetric spans.

Tallbridgeguy is one of the few blogs to discuss bridge design rather than just depict it, and has recently used various posts to focus on the theme of sustainability in bridge engineering.

Frame and Form is an irregular Spanish blog (with English translation). I particularly enjoyed two recent posts on bridges designed by Anta, which are unusual yet simple and attractive.

Bridgehunter provides a database of historic bridge structures in the United States, campaigns for their preservation and restoration, and always makes for interesting reading. Recent highlights include their Top Twelve threatened but saveable bridges, as well as a roundup of preservation success stories from 2010.

From Korea, Bridgeworld publishes a wide variety of short features on bridges, often unusual ones. I particularly liked the stressed ribbon bridge examples they showed recently, a variation on this design that's not often seen.

Reminder for Footbridge Awards 2011

There are just two weeks to go to get entries in for the 2011 Footbridge Awards. I've posted the details (and a few suggestions) previously, so won't repeat them again!

Happy New Year

I'm back from my Christmas break, although blogging may be somewhat subdued as 2011 begins as I have several other things to attend to, New Year's resolutions amongst them.

While I've been away, there have been a couple of interesting items in bridge-related news, chief among them being the New York Port Authority's decision to raise the road deck of the Bayonne Bridge, rather than to build a replacement structure (the third option, raising the bridge and its supporting arch, was surely never a serious contender). At a cost of US$1 billion, this will allow much taller ships to pass below the bridge and access the ports at Newark and Elizabeth. It will be a very challenging project, and definitely one to watch with interest over the next few years.

In the UK, both the big bridges currently under development have had positive news. The £600m Mersey Gateway received government planning consent just before Christmas, about a week after the £2bn new Forth bridge obtained legislative approval from the Scottish Parliament. Both bridge are multi-span cable-stay structures, although they tackle the stability issues of such a design in very different ways. The Mersey span uses a deeper deck to stiffen the towers, while the (significantly longer) Forth crossing has a more innovative solution involving criss-crossing stays near the middle of each span.

Elsewhere, a u-turn by a landowner means that £2.65m of grants earmarked for a new cycle bridge near Perth may never be used.

And it's great to see the Bridge Photo of the Day blog return to life, with a suitably chilly set of images.