“The Garden Bridge is a land grab,” says Michael Ball of Thames Central Open Spaces. “That is, a major piece of public space and amenity – the South Bank, the River Thames, and the views across central London – would be sequestered for private interests, albeit cloaked in some appearance of charity and beneficence. When I saw Pier 55 I realised it was an even more blatant example of the same idea.” — The Guardian

Sitting atop Lake Washington, the new State Route 520 is now the longest floating bridge in the world—beating its predecessor, the old State Route 520, by 130 feet [...].

This new bridge has stronger pontoons than the last one, and can withstand more buffeting from wind and waves. It also has a stormwater collection system, bus lanes in both directions, a path for bikes and pedestrians, and the capacity to someday accommodate a light rail system. — atlasobscura.com

The daring concept proposes one cantilever on the Cornish mainland and another on the island fortress, where, legend has it, King Arthur was conceived. The two structures stretch out to each other across the void but do not quite meet. — theguardian.com

Final farewells were visible all over the 6th Street Viaduct on Wednesday. Spinning tire trails were burned onto the bridge's asphalt deck; declarations of love and poetry were scribbled onto its concrete railings and incomprehensible graffiti was blasted across its high metal arches...Demolition of the crumbling bridge is scheduled to begin this week and could take up to nine months to complete, as crews cart away more than 110,000 tons of concrete. — Los Angeles Times

Why build a straightforward bridge for an unremarkable sum when the same bridge could be built as a circle for vast amounts of money?

A new bridge spanning (or circumnavigating) Laguna Garzón, a coastal lagoon in southeastern Uruguay, poses just that question. [...] At a glance, it’s the sort of ridiculousness that you might expect of a bridge in London.

In fact, there’s a perfectly good functional explanation for it. — citylab.com

In 1502, at the request of the Turkish sultan, Leonardo da Vinci came up with the design for a stone bridge that would cross the Golden Horn [...]. With a span of some 240 meters, it would have been the longest bridge in the world—if it had been built. Now, more than 500 years after the sultan rejected da Vinci’s design, a team of students and volunteers in the Finnish town of Juuka are in the process of constructing a scale model of the original drawing—out of ice. — history.com

Visitors to the garden bridge in London will be tracked by their mobile phone signals and supervised by staff with powers to take people’s names and addresses and confiscate and destroy banned items, including kites and musical instruments, according to a planning document. [...]

Caroline Pidgeon [...] said she feared the bridge was following “a worrying trend of the privatisation of public places, where the rights of private owners trump those of ordinary people”. — theguardian.com

The controversial and seemingly doomed plan for a garden bridge over the Thames in London could be resurrected after the group behind the project reached an agreement with council officials over the level of public funding. On Monday...a joint announcement by Lambeth...and the Garden Bridge Trust said negotiations would resume after a deal to limit the money Transport for London (TfL) would have to pay towards construction to £10m, from an original £30m. — The Guardian

The recently completed span is a glass walkway suspended a stomach-flipping 180 meters (590 feet) above a sheer drop in China's central Hunan Province.

Haohan Qiao, as it's known in Chinese, is the latest in a series of glass-floored attractions to open in China and the rest of the world.

Each of the glass panes is 24 millimeters thick and 25 times stronger than normal glass.

Hunan is due to open another glass bridge later this year in the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon area [...]. — cnn.com

A pedestrian bridge designed by Olafur Eliasson has opened in Copenhagen, inspired by the Danish-Icelandic artist's childhood in Iceland.

Reminiscent of sailing boats, Cirkelbroen, or circle bridge, is made of five circular platforms in different sizes, each with its own "mast", according to Danish foundation Nordea-fonden [...].

Spanning the Danish capital's Christianshavn canal, the bridge, some 40 meters-long (131 feet), has a section that swings open to allow boats to pass through. — reuters.com

MX3D, a research and development startup company, will use robots to 3D print a pedestrian bridge across one of Amsterdam’s canals. The versatile six-axis robotic arms will ‘draw’ steel structures in 3D, starting from one side of the canal and building across until it reaches the other end. The robot will also print its own support, which allows it to work autonomously. The location of the bridge will be announced soon and construction is set to commence in 2017. — iflscience.com

Just north of Newark, New Jersey, the Pulaski Skyway became the country’s first so-called “superhighway” — a 3.5-mile raised roadway running over the top of some of the most heavily industrialized property in the country. [...]

In infrastructure terms, the Pulaski is what’s called “functionally obsolete,” meaning it doesn’t meet modern design standards —and the money being spent to fix it up won’t change that. — marketplace.org