Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge
Photos
Deck view looking East from point near cable anchor
Photo taken by Dan Crawford in January 2012
BH Photo #224065
Description
First of 3 new City of Dallas "signature" bridges over the Trinity River.Cable-stayed bridge (harp style)-- 400 ft high arched pylon with 58 cables attached to center spine of bridge. 3 lanes of traffic each way. Concrete deck approach spans.
Facts
- Overview
- Cable-stayed bridge over Trinity River on Singleton Blvd / Woodall Rodgers Fwy
- Location
- Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
- Status
- Open to traffic
- History
- Built 2012
- Builder
- - Santiago Calatrava of Benimàmet, Valencia, Spain (Designer)
- Design
- Cable-stayed
- Dimensions
-
Length of largest span: 1,197.0 ft.
Total length: 1,870.0 ft.
- Approximate latitude, longitude
- +32.78004, -96.82264 (decimal degrees)
32°46'48" N, 96°49'22" W (degrees°minutes'seconds") - Approximate UTM coordinates
- 14/703923/3629001 (zone/easting/northing)
- Quadrangle map:
- Dallas
- Inventory number
- BH 51125 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Update Log
- November 4, 2015: New photo from Albert Johnston
- August 23, 2014: New Street View added by Ralph Demars
- October 10, 2013: Photo imported by Luke Harden
- January 24, 2013: Updated by Andy Peters: edits category for Santiago Calatrava
- February 19, 2012: New photo from Dan Crawford
- January 29, 2012: Added by Dan Crawford
Comments
While I will admit that the main span of this bridge is intriguing with its unusual cable arrangement, at the same time this bridge demonstrates what is wrong with modern bridge aesthetics (in the rare cases where modern bridges have aesthetics at all). Take a look at the approach spans. While an effort was made to make the main span look interesting, the approach spans couldn't have been made more plain and ugly if you tried. The piers are like what we use in Michigan for freeway overpasses and the approach spans appear to be some sort of pre-stressed box beam or girder, I can't tell.
Compare this bridge to something like the St. Johns Bridge in Oregon to see a truly aesthetic bridge. From the base of the anchorage to the tip of the tower, and from abutment to abutment the St. Johns Bridge has evidence of painstaking effort to provide an aesthetically pleasing bridge.
The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge would have looked a lot nicer with say concrete deck arch approach spans.
This page's URL is http://bridgehunter.com/tx/dallas/margaret-hunt-hill/
I pasted this originally in December of 2014, deleted the original today, and reposted an edited version.
As I understand it, this bridge is just a concrete deck bridge with DECORATIVE cable arrays. TXDOT did that to cut costs.
Back then, I felt like neither of the others would be built with Calatrava effects. The Calatrava effects on 3rd one was cancelled. The second one IS PURELY decorative and scaled back.