Quaibrücke, Zürich

Quay Bridge Quaibrücke
File:Zürich - Quaibrücke - Haus Bellevue - Alpenquai 2010-06-18 19-39-00 ShiftN.jpg Quaibrücke
Coordinates
Carries	Two tram tracks, and on each side two lanes for road traffic, bycicles, and pedestrian sidewalks
Crosses	Limmat, the outflow of Lake Zurich
Locale	Zürich, Switzerland
Official name	Quaibrücke
ID number	1560
Followed by	Münsterbrücke
Characteristics
Material	Steel
Width	30.5 m (100 ft)
Longest span	121.9 m (400 ft)
Number of spans	4
History
Engineering design by	Arnold Bürkli
Construction begin	1880
Construction end	1884
Opened	1 January 1885, 18 March 1984
Rebuilt	1932, 1939 (widening to 28.5m), 1983-1984 (total rebuild and widening to 30.5m), 2015 (refurbishment)

Quaibrücke (English: Quay Bridge) is a road, tramway, pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the river Limmat, at the outflow of Lake Zürich in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It was built simultaneously with the construction of Zürich's new quays between 1881 and 1887.

Geography

Quaibrücke is situated at the outflow of Lake Zürich and connects the Bürkliplatz with the Bellevueplatz, and hence the lake's left (or western) shore with the right (or eastern) shore. It is a nodal point of the Tram lines 2, 5, 8, 9 and 11, as well of the road traffic between General-Guisan-Quai, and Utoquai.

History

File:Quaibrücke Zürich um 1890.jpg

Quaibrücke around 1890

The Quaibrücke was erected between 1880 and 1884 under the management of Arnold Bürkli (1833–1894), the city engineer at the time. A modern land connection was urgently needed after an intense political campaign.

On May 18, 1873 the municipal council (the legislature) approved the construction of the Quay Bridge with a strong majority vote.

The bridge was built together with the municipalities of Enge (left, west shore), Riesbach (right, east shore), and Zurich. It was also built simultaneously with the Utoquai and General-Guisan-Quai on the two shores of Lake Zurich, but was finished half a year earlier. Since the bridge disabled the traffic on the Limmat, the landing gate of the ZSG Zürichsee-Schifffahrtsgesellschaft had to be moved from the Bauschänzli island to the present Bürkliterrasse.

As part of the Zürich lakefront, two machine-gun bunkers were built in the 1940s, which are still preserved at their original sites at Limmatquai and Bürkliterrasse. The original construction had to be replaced in 1984 and a new bridge was built parallel to the old bridge between 1983 and 1984, on steel girders. The weekend of March 16/17, 1984, traffic was blocked and the old construction was moved on steel beams and columns in the lake. Initiatives to redesign the old bridge as a pedestrian zone were rejected.

Between April and November 2015 further refurbishment work was applied.

External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons