Jacques Cartier Bridge
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The Jacques Cartier Bridge (French: pont Jacques-Cartier) is a steel truss cantilever bridge crossing the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal Island, Montreal, Quebec to the south shore at Longueuil, Quebec, Canada.
The Jacques Cartier Bridge is the site of more suicides than any other single structure in the world besides the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco [1] (http://www.suicidereferencelibrary.com/test4~id~1380.php). Pictograms, Police Patrols and more recently suicide barriers have addressed this somewhat.
Together with the Champlain Bridge, it is administered by The Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Inc. (http://www.pjcci.ca/), a federal agency.
Specifications
Construction was undertaken in 1925 and completed in 1930. It was opened to traffic on May 14th. Originally named the Montreal Harbour Bridge (pont du Havre), it was renamed in 1934 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Jacques Cartier's first voyage up the St. Lawrence River. It was originally designed as a road, tramway, and pedestrian bridge. The tramway tracks were removed in 1959. It is now a five-lane highway bridge of 3,400 m (11,236 ft) in length including the approach viaducts. There are approximately 43 million vehicle crossings annually, making it the busiest bridge in Canada.
- Length of bridge structure: 2,687.42 m
- Length of main bridge: 590.35 m
- Length of centre span: 334.35 m
- Span lengths of support structures 128.00 m each
This bridge follows the general design concept of the Quebec Bridge.
The bridge crosses Île Sainte-Hélène in the centre of the river, where offramps allow access to the Parc Jean-Drapeau and La Ronde amusement park.