The new Laycock Park Pedestrian Bridge, designed by our Calgary team, was successfully opened in 2019. This bridge re-establishes The City of Calgary North-South regional pathway and neighborhood access to Laycock Park that were disrupted by partial washout of an existing timber bridge during Calgary’s 2013 flood.
The new bridge, located on the Southwest corner of the intersection of 64th Avenue NE and Deerfoot Trail, is part of a greater re-naturalization project currently being implemented by The City for Laycock Park.
The bridge provides an aesthetically pleasing, elegant, robust, innovative, economical, durable, maintainable, and sustainable structure.
The new bridge, which features durable Alaskan Yellow Cedar (AYC) glulam girders, that pushed the limits of design and fabrication possibilities at 37-metres long without splices, has a pedestrian and eco-friendly coating system and the first example of a proprietary Glass-Fibre-Reinforced Polymer – wrapped black spruce glulam timber pedestrian bridge deck, coated with a proprietary wearing course system, in Calgary. Harvested from regional renewable resources, AYC provides the required strength, stability, and service-life for the bridge girders and demonstrates the usability of timber as a modern, efficient, and elegant sustainable cold climate bridge construction material.
The materials used in the bridge, including stainless steel girder caps, bike rails, and flashing, align with The City’s vision for sustainable development and coincide with the public interest in protecting the environment and fighting climate change. The new bridge’s abutments and the banks upstream and downstream of the bridge were protected from erosion concerns through a combination of bioengineering and riprap bank protection solutions. The bridge has a ‘natural stone’ finish concrete form lined block retaining wing walls and granite stone bridge curbs that add to the structure’s aesthetics.
We presented the details of this bridge, including the bridge’s structural system, design innovations, and aesthetic design features, at the CSCE 2021 Annual Conference virtually in May 2021.
Sustainability is one of our core values. Backed by empowered teams, we implement best practices in corporate operations and solutions to address environmental risk and minimize our carbon footprint.