Britain's largest crane manoeuvred a new footbridge into place across Scotland's M8 motorway on Friday evening. The eye-catching US$8.9 million structure has a spiral design, formed from tubular steel, and encloses a glass-sided walkway.
It was fabricated off-site and delivered in seven sections before being welded together, given an aluminium silver paint finish and fitted with the fully-enclosed glazed walkway ahead of the lift. The operation to lift the 92m structure into place involved slowly hoisting and rotating it over the existing footbridge using a crane with a 90m-long jib and a lifting capacity of 1200t.
The bridge was built by Raynesway Construction for Transport Scotland as part of the redevelopment of the Harthill service area on the motorway, which links Edinburgh and Glasgow. Harthill now has two new service stations and a local public transport interchange.
