Tinsley Viaduct
| Tinsley Viaduct | |
|---|---|
Tinsley Viaduct as seen from Meadowhall, with the two cooling towers of the former Blackburn Meadows power station prior to their demolition in 2008.
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| Coordinates | 53°25′03″N 1°24′21″W / 53.41750°N 1.40583°WCoordinates: 53°25′03″N 1°24′21″W / 53.41750°N 1.40583°W |
| Carries | |
| Crosses | |
| Locale | Tinsley/Wincobank |
| Maintained by | Highways Agency |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | twin deck box girder bridge |
| Total length | 1,033 m (3,389 ft) |
| Width | 6 lanes |
| Height | 20 m (66 ft) (to upper level) |
| Longest span | 50 m (160 ft) (20 spans) |
| Clearance above | 10 m (33 ft) (on the A631) |
| Clearance below | 10 m (33 ft) |
| History | |
| Construction begin | Spring 1965 |
| Construction end | 1968 |
| Opened | 25 March 1968 |
| Statistics | |
| Daily traffic | 100,000 vehicles/day |
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Tinsley Viaduct is a two-tier road bridge in Sheffield, England; the first of its kind in the UK. It carries the M1 and the A631 1,033 metres over the Don Valley, from Tinsley to Wincobank, also crossing the Sheffield Canal, the Midland Main Line and the former South Yorkshire Railway line from Tinsley Junction to Rotherham Central. The Supertram route to Meadowhall runs below part of the viaduct on the trackbed of the South Yorkshire Railway line to Barnsley.
The viaduct was opened in March 1968 and cost £6 million to build. The structure is unusual in that it is built as steel box girders, at a time when most long span bridges were being built of post-tensioned concrete deck design. This use of steel allowed a significant cost saving over alternative methods, but became controversial after three serious disasters, when new bridges collapsed in 1970 (West Gate Bridge and Cleddau Bridge) and 1971 (). Fifty-one people were killed in these failures, leading in the UK to the formation of the Merrison Committee. The report of the Merrison committee resulted in the temporary closure of two of the carriageways on the lower deck and two on the upper deck, the installation of extra steel strengthening bands around the bridge's support columns and other works which were completed in 1983. A further program of strengthening was completed in 2006. The recent work to strengthen the bridge was a very complex operation, with a lot of the work happening inside the box beam spine. The works took over 3 years and cost £82 million (14 times the original bridge building cost). The strengthening project won the British construction industry's Major Project Award in 2005.
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