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01/01/08 |
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This section of EdwardRingwald.com is dedicated to the bridge tenders of Pinellas County who work tirelessly to get you where you want to go for both motorists and boaters alike! Now you can get to this page easier! I have a new URL as well as a sub domain name which will bring you right to this page; simply type in DrawBridgeAhead.com or DrawBridgeAhead.EdwardRingwald.com and you will come right here to this page! Another way I make content more accessible here at EdwardRingwald.com! The drawbridge. You know, the kind of bridge that inconveniences you and I when a high boat has to pass through. But for us Pinellas County residents (and our visitors, too) the drawbridge including the familiar sound of the steel grid deck as we drive across is a way of life. After all, the beaches are connected to mainland Pinellas County by a network of drawbridges running from Tarpon Springs and Dunedin all the way south to the Pinellas Bayway and Tierra Verde. If you live on the mainland and you want to spend a day at the beach, chances are you will interact with one of these bridges on your way to the beach. Besides, there will be times when you will have to be stuck in traffic as one of these drawbridges have to be raised in order to let a high boat pass. If you happen to have to wait for a drawbridge it's a sight to behold as the center steel span rises to let the boat pass through. Drawbridges have been around for ages, beginning with the manually operated drawbridges seen around castles; their purpose was to prevent the enemy from intruding as the castle is surrounded by a deep moat and their construction was in such a way as to prevent vaulting across. As civilization emerged from the medieval castles of long ago to today's contemporary society, the basic idea of the drawbridge has been refined and perfected over the years. Hand cranks gave way to electric motors and safety systems have been refined. Drawbridges come in a variety of flavors suited for the location and the type of traffic, both highway and marine. The type of drawbridge is carefully chosen after extensive engineering studies are conducted. Bascule bridge: Derived from the French word Bascule meaning "seesaw", it is based on the principle of a seesaw on a playground. Take a seesaw and place something heavy on one end. The heavy end goes down while the light end goes up. Now place something on the other end and you have the seesaw balanced. In a bascule bridge the seesaw - called a leaf - is balanced to permit vehicular traffic across. When the bridge tender opens the bridge a series of motors and gears helps to bring the end seen underneath the roadway containing a set of blocks (called counterweights) downward which makes the bascule leaf rise. Bascule bridges can be single leaf or double leaf. All of Pinellas County's drawbridges are of the double leaf design with one exception being the Beckett Bridge in Tarpon Springs, which features a single leaf bascule bridge design. Lift bridge: This kind of drawbridge rises on a set of uprights, moved up or down by steel cables on all four ends. A lift bridge operates similar to an elevator, where you have the passenger elevator cab on one end of the cable and the counterweight on the other end of the cable. Jacksonville's Main Street Bridge that crosses the St. Johns River is a lift bridge, as well as the eastbound lanes of Hillsborough Avenue as it crosses the Hillsborough River in Tampa. Swing bridge: This kind of drawbridge is mounted in the center on a turret. When the bridge needs to be opened the motors and gears mounted in the turret help move the bridge horizontally into a different direction in order to allow boats to pass through. The bridge on Columbus Avenue as it crosses the Hillsborough River in Tampa is an example of a swing bridge. Back in the older days, drawbridges were constructed rather low for its aesthetic value. An example of this is the old Treasure Island Causeway built in 1939, as well as the original Gandy Bridge built in 1924. Today drawbridge design standards call for the moveable section to be constructed higher to reduce the number of bridge openings which inconvenience motor vehicle traffic. Moreover, some drawbridges are being reconstructed as high level fixed span bridges especially when the route carried over the drawbridge is a crucial hurricane evacuation route. The Clearwater Memorial Causeway, the Sand Key Bridge and the Belleair Causeway (coming soon!) are great examples of what used to be a high arch drawbridge reconstructed as a high level fixed span bridge. So, let's hop into our virtual car (online, that is) and go drawbridge exploring in Pinellas County as I show you the drawbridges that connect the beaches to the mainland. We'll go up the Pinellas Suncoast from Tierra Verde and the Pinellas Bayway to the Dunedin Causeway in Dunedin and the Beckett Bridge in Tarpon Springs. If you would like to view an image of all the bridges of the Pinellas beaches in one convenient photo gallery you can click here to take a look. And on one more subject. While Pinellas County's many drawbridges are owned by various governmental entities like the Florida DOT, Pinellas County Government and the City of Treasure Island, their day to day operation is commanded by the many bridge tenders responsible for making sure that you get to where you want to go, whether you are a motorist headed to one of our many beautiful Gulf beaches for the day or a boater sailing on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. In so keeping, this section of EdwardRingwald.com is dedicated to the many bridge tenders of Pinellas County who keep the drawbridges humming daily for motorists and boaters alike.
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This site was last updated 01/01/08