page_title: Humber Bridge
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Humber Bridge / History / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Humber Bridge under construction, at Hessle Foreshore, Hessle, East Riding of Yorkshire, England.Plans for a crossing of the Humber Estuary date back to the 19th century, but it was in 1966 that Barbara Castle, then Minister of Transport, sanctioned construction of this suspension bridge. Notoriously, the government was facing a difficult by-election in Hull at the time and the announcement was widely seen as a blatant election bribe. Nevertheless, construction began in 1973 and work was well advanced by the time of this 1980 view; the bridge was finally opened in June 1981. The cost was £151 million, well in excess of the original estimates. The bridge now carries about 6 million vehicles a year, but the tolls remain controversial and it is a moot point as to whether the whole enterprise has ever represented value for money.
context_page_description: The Humber Bridge, near Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, is a 2.22-kilometre 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.
context_section_description: The consulting engineers for the project were Freeman Fox & Partners (now Arcadis NV). 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 4,500-foot (1,400 m) suspension bridge for the Humber Tunnel Executive Committee. Sir Gilbert Roberts produced more ideas in 1955 for a bridge with a 4,500-foot (1,400 m) 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 (24 April 1922 – 31 July 1990) 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 (for the tolls) was designed by Parker & Rosner. The landscaping was designed by Prof Arnold Weddle. Wind tunnel testing took place at the National Maritime Institute (now part of BMT Limited) at Teddington and the road deck is designed for wind speeds up to 105 miles per hour (170 km/h).
caption: The deck under construction in May 1980. The deck was erected between October 1979 and July 1980
exif: {"Image Make": "Plustek", "Image Model": "OpticFilm 7300", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0", "Image DateTime": "2009:11:29 21:49:24", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "212", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "416", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4537", "EXIF ExifVersion": "[0, 2, 2, 0]", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:11:29 21:37:19", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "[0, 1, 0, 0]", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "640", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "415"}