History
Construction on the Gateway Bridge commenced on 5 June 1980. The construction of the bridge started before the design was completed, to fast track its construction. It was officially commissioned on 11 January 1986. On this day 200,000 people crossed the bridge by foot as part of the opening activities. About five months after the bridge was opened Prince Phillip officially opened the bridge.
In 1986 the bridge carried an average of 12,500 vehicles per day. In 2001 the bridge was crossed by 27 million vehicles. In early 2010 the single bridge was carrying an average of 100,000 vehicles per day.
The annual Bridge to Brisbane fun run has begun from the southern entrance to the bridge for the past decade.
Read more about this topic: Sir Leo Hielscher Bridges
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)