Overview

• Name: Pont De La Concorde Footbridge, La Ronde
• Client: Six Flag Entertainment Corporation
• Contract Value: $2.8 Million
• Contract Type: EPC
• Sector: Infrastructure
• Timeline: Feb – 2012 – Dec – 2012
• Location: Longueuil, Montreal

Project Description


The beautiful crossing owned by the City of Montreal, the Pont de la Concorde overpass links the Cite-du-Havre to Ile Sainte-Helene, across the Saint-Lawrence River. The multi-award-winning Pont de la Concorde Footbridge is a five-span structure across the St Lawrence River along Swan Lake.


Developed as part of a wider regeneration project for the city, it is 120m in length, installed between abutments and features additional ramp lengths of approximately 27m and 29m. Its deck width varies from 4m to 10m at its widest. Designed around the principle of “elegant simplicity”, the Pont de la Concorde Footbridge provides safe and sustainable access into La-Ronde Theme Park for cyclists as well as pedestrians. Contributing to the ongoing transformation of the city, it replaced a 2m-wide footbridge that was too narrow to accommodate rising numbers.


With 16,000 people using the bridge each week, the Pont de la Concorde Footbridge is a “pivotal” part of a more sustainable approach to travelling around St Helens Island. Interestingly, on its first day, more than 160,000 people crossed it – more people than those who collectively visit Disney parks in a day in the Canada, UK or Paris. The new bridge is a sleek, shiny high-tech design with an 8m wide walkway and stainless steel railings, and it features a multi-colored illumination system. The Bridge is supported on the existing weir buttresses using an innovative strut design that allows it to “float” above the river a few meters away from the Concorde.


The vertical profile is a continuous curved profile with ramps at a gradient of 1:20 while the horizontal alignment is also curved with a degree of a-symmetry. The new footbridge consists of structural steel, enveloped in aluminum cladding with a glass parapet on the east elevation and a stainless steel post and wire system on the west parapet. This high quality bridge project was completed in just eleven months to meet a deadline for the 2013 Tall Ships event.