The Millennium Bridge

It didn't turn into the white elephant the Millennium Dome did but it was up there with it for a while. The Millennium Bridge was one of the big projects designed to celebrate the year 2000, proposed in the mid-90’s and started in 1998, it was going to be the first new bridge across the River Thames in London since Tower Bridge opened in 1894.

It was to be a pedestrian only suspension bridge linking the north side of the river around Upper Thames Street with the south bank directly next to the Tate Modern. It came in at a price of £18million and opened on 10 June 2000, so far so good.
It was very popular as soon as it opened, much to popular for the designer’s because when the large numbers of people walked in some kind of unison the bridge began to sway from side to side. A fun item on all the tv news bulletins for a day or so but then reality set in and with the ‘Wobbly Bridge’ swaying getting quite pronounced the bridge had to close on the 12th June 2000.

To fix the problem required the installation of 89 dampers to absorb the energy and control the horizontal and vertical movement of the bridge. This cost £5million and took from May 2001 till January 2002 to complete, the Millennium Bridge finally reopened in February 2002.

It is a nice bridge to walk across, it’s directly in line with St Paul’s Cathedral on the northern side and is a good spot to take photos from, up and down the river or of St Paul’s or Tate Modern. Traffic on it seems fairly busy, lots of joggers coming from the City, but there may have been an event of some kind on today.
Nearest tube Blackfriars.