Millennium Bridge, London

Millennium Bridge, London
The Millennium Bridge, officially known as the London Millennium Footbridge, is a steel suspension bridge for pedestrians crossing the River Thames in London, England, linking Bankside with the City of London. It is owned and maintained by Bridge House Estates, a charitable trust overseen by the City of London Corporation. Construction began in 1998, and it initially opened on 10 June 2000.
Londoners nicknamed it the "Wobbly Bridge" after pedestrians experienced an alarming swaying motion on its opening day. The bridge was closed later that day and, after two days of limited access, it was closed again for almost two years so that modifications and repairs could be made to keep the bridge stable and stop the swaying motion. It reopened in February 2002.
The bridge is located between Southwark Bridge and Blackfriars Railway Bridge. Its southern end is near the Globe Theatre, the Bankside Gallery, and Tate Modern, while its northern end is next to the City of London School below St Paul's Cathedral. The bridge's alignment is such that a clear view (i.e. a "terminating vista") of St Paul's south facade is presented from across the river, framed by the bridge supports.
Design
The design of the bridge was the subject of a competition organised in 1996 by Southwark council and RIBA Competitions. The winning entry was an innovative "blade of light" effort from Arup Group, Foster and Partners, and Sir Anthony Caro. Due to height restrictions, and to improve the view, the bridge's suspension design had the supporting cables below the deck level, giving a very shallow profile. The bridge has two river piers and is made of three main sections of and (north to south) with a total structure length of ; the aluminium deck is wide. The eight suspension cables are tensioned to pull with a force of 2,000 tons against the piers set into each bank—enough to support a working load of 5,000 people on the bridge at a time.
Construction
Ordinarily, bridges across the River Thames require an Act of Parliament. For this bridge, that was avoided by the Port of London Authority granting a licence for the structure, and the City of London and London Borough of Southwark granting planning permission. Construction began in late 1998, and the main works were started on 28 April 1999 by Monberg & Thorsen and Sir Robert McAlpine. The eventual cost was £18.2 million (£2.2m over budget), primarily paid for by the Millennium Commission and the London Bridge Trust.
Opening
The bridge opened on 10 June 2000, one month late.
Unexpected lateral vibration due to resonant structural response caused the bridge to be closed on 12 June for modifications. Attempts had been made to limit the number of people crossing the bridge, which led to long queues but were ineffective to dampen the vibrations. Closure of the bridge only two days after opening attracted public criticism as another high-profile British Millennium project that suffered an embarrassing setback, akin to how many saw the Millennium Dome.
The vibration was attributed to an under-researched phenomenon whereby pedestrians crossing a bridge that has a lateral sway have an unconscious tendency to match their footsteps to the sway, exacerbating it. The tendency of a suspension bridge to sway vertically when troops march over it in step was well known, which is why troops stop marching in stride together as a unit when crossing such a bridge. An example is London's Albert Bridge, which has a sign dating from 1873 warning marching ranks of soldiers to break step while crossing.
Resonance
The bridge's movements were caused by a positive feedback phenomenon, known as synchronous lateral excitation. The natural sway motion of people walking caused small sideways oscillations in the bridge, which in turn caused people on the bridge to sway in step, increasing the amplitude of the bridge oscillations and continually reinforcing the effect; the maximum sway was around . On the day of opening, the bridge was crossed by 90,000 people, with up to 2,000 on the bridge at a time.
Resonant vibrational modes due to vertical loads (such as trains, traffic or pedestrians) and wind loads are well understood in bridge design. In the case of the Millennium Bridge, because the lateral motion caused pedestrians to directly participate with the bridge, the vibrational modes had not been anticipated by the designers. When the bridge lurches to one side, the pedestrians must adjust to keep from falling over, and they all do this at the same time. The effect is similar to soldiers marching in lockstep, but horizontal instead of vertical.
The risks of lateral vibration in lightweight bridges are well known. Any bridge with lateral frequency modes of less than 1.3 Hz, and sufficiently low mass, could witness the same phenomenon with sufficient pedestrian loading. The greater the number of people, the greater the amplitude of the vibrations. Other bridges which have seen similar problems are:
Auckland Harbour Bridge, with a lateral frequency of 0.67 Hz during a 1975 demonstration
Birmingham NEC Link bridge, with a lateral frequency of 0.7 Hz
Mitigation
Engineers at Arup, the company that designed the bridge, conducted research into the unexpected oscillation, which they called 'synchronous lateral excitation'. The first laboratory studies used pedestrians on moving platforms at the University of Southampton and Imperial College London. Later in 2000, one span of the bridge was instrumented and tested with crowds of up to 275 people.
They concluded that making the bridge stiffer, to move its resonant frequency out of the excitation range, was not feasible as it would greatly change its appearance. Instead, the resonance was controlled by retrofitting 37 viscous fluid dampers to dissipate energy. These include 17 chevron dampers – long V-shaped braces under the deck panels – to control lateral movement, 4 vertical to ground dampers to control lateral and vertical movements, and 16 pier dampers to control lateral and torsional movements. Additionally, 52 tuned mass dampers add inertia to control vertical movement. The work took from May 2001 to January 2002 and cost £5 million. After a period of testing, the bridge was reopened on 22 February 2002 and, since that date, has not been subject to significant vibration. In spite of the successful cure, the "wobbly bridge" (sometimes "wibbly-wobbly") epithet remains in common usage among Londoners.
Cable resonance
An artistic expression of the higher-frequency resonances within the cables of the bridge were explored by Bill Fontana's Harmonic Bridge exhibition at the Tate Modern in mid-2006. This used acoustic transducers placed at strategic locations on the cabling of the Millennium Bridge and the signals from those transducers were amplified and dynamically distributed throughout the Turbine Hall of the Tate by a programme which Fontana entered into the sound diffusion engine of the Richmond Sound Design AudioBox.
Repair
In October 2023, the bridge was set to be closed for three weeks to allow repairs to its surface, undertaken by FM Conway. The bridge closed on Saturday 14 October and was due to reopen by 5 November.
Millennium Inclinator
A short inclined lift, known as the Millennium Inclinator, is next to the northern end of the Millennium Bridge. It was opened in December 2003 to allow pedestrians to surmount the steep slope (13.6°) of Peter's Hill from the riverside to the entrance to the Millennium Bridge without using the alternative flight of steps. The lower end of the lift is on Paul's Walk next to the Thames, and the top end is further up Peter's Hill on the terrace which is level with the deck of the bridge. It was primarily installed for use by those who cannot easily manage the steep steps, such as people with disabilities and parents with push chairs.
The lift carriage was originally powered by an electric traction motor, manufactured in Italy by Maspero Elevatori, with a speed of and a maximum capacity of . However, by 2010 the City of London Planning and Transportation Committee decided that the level of service was unacceptable, because the inclinator was frequently out of service due to mechanical breakdowns and vandalism. So the Committee agreed it would be replaced at a cost of up to £750,000 in time for the 2012 Summer Paralympics.
A major renovation project was undertaken in 2012, and the lift was reopened in time to be used by people attending the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant of 3 June 2012, which took place about a month before the 2012 Summer Olympics. The new lift was manufactured by the company Hütter Aufzüge of Glinde, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, a lift manufacturer which was taken over by the Otis Elevator Company in 2013. Installation was by Axis Elevators.
Following a redevelopment of the area in 2021 the lift was closed and will be replaced by a platform lift.
In popular culture
The bridge is featured in the opening scenes of the film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, where the bridge collapses following an attack by Death Eaters.
The bridge appears in the 2014 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Guardians of the Galaxy during the climactic battle on Xandar.
See also
Angers Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge—Pedestrian access
Broughton Suspension Bridge, which collapsed in 1831 partly due to resonant swaying
Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapsed in 1940
Tay Bridge disaster
List of crossings of the River Thames
List of bridges in London
References
Notes
Bibliography
Reaney, Patricia. (6 November 2005). "Why the Millennium Bridge wobbled". New Sunday Times, p. F20.
Strogatz, Steven. (2003). Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. New York: Hyperion Books. (cloth) [2nd ed., Hyperion, 2004. (paper)]
External links
Arup's Millennium Bridge site
A PDF paper from Arup, discussing the engineering and resonance of the bridge.
A paper from Taylor Devices Inc on the dampers retrofitted to the bridge
Information about the GERB TMDs retrofitted to the bridge.
Brooklyn Bridge: lateral S-shaped vibration = pedestrian oscillations or "sway" {broken}
A Cambridge University Engineering Department account of the Millennium Bridge problem. (January 2002)
Bing's Image of the Day for 2020-06-10. The Millennium Bridge is featured.
Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: . A video of a descent and an ascent using the Millennium Inclinator.
Tourist attractions in London
Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Southwark
Bridges in the City of London
Suspension bridges in the United Kingdom
Bridges completed in 2000
Buildings and structures celebrating the third millennium
Foster and Partners buildings
Pedestrian bridges across the River Thames
Tourist attractions in the London Borough of Southwark
Tourist attractions in the City of London
2000 establishments in England
Pedestrian bridges in London
Transport in the City of London
Bridge light displays
View of Tate Modern & Millennium Bridge, London