Leamouth Vertical Lift Footbridge - Canning Town, London, UK - Vertical Lift Bridges on Waymarking.com

Strictly-speaking this bridge is called the Leamouth Vertical Lift Footbridge, but pretty much every reference I could find on-line calls it the ‘Red Bridge’.

The pedestrian and cycle bridge crosses Bow Creek - Bow Creek being the name given to the tidal stretch of the River Lea below Bow Locks. The east side of the bridge is in the London Borough of Newham, whilst the west side is in Tower Hamlets. The bridge has a single, steel supporting truss, with a box girder deck set to one side. Everything is painted red. The cost of the bridge was estimated in the media to have been £3.5 million.

It was commissioned by developer Ballymore to connect the new residential development of City Island to Canning Town Station and opened in 2016. A new, rotunda-shaped entrance/exit to the underground station has appeared next to the bridge. It was built in 1999, looking to the future, but did not fully open until the bridge was completed in 2016.

Designed by Davies Maguire in association with Eadon Consulting, the bridge has a single 82 metre span and weighs 160 tonnes. The pedestrian and cycle deck is 3 metres wide and is designed to lift to allow the passage of tall vessels on Bow Creek. The bridge has a tower at each end which contains a pair of hydraulic cylinders. These are capable of raising the bridge by 4 metres, as required by the Port of London Authority. There seems to be very little river traffic on Bow Creek these days and lifting of the bridge must be a rare event indeed.

Visit Instructions:
1) After you've found a vertical lift bridge, go visit it, get the coordinates, a picture or two of it, and if it is in use or not still as a lift bridge.
Then log it and post your pictures! At least one of the photos must be of you and your GPS there with the bridge in the background. (No old vacation shots or photos off the internet!)
2) Include the coordinates, city/county/state/country and the name of the bridge (if it has one).
3) Include any interesting information about the structure

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   06/10/2023 Master Mariner visited it 04/30/2023 Vinceo visited it

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