The Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway, originally called the Burlington Bay Skyway and simply known as the Burlington Skyway or The Skyway, is a pair of high-level freeway bridges (built in 1958 and 1985) spanning the Burlington Bay Canal. The Skyway, as it is locally known, is located in Hamilton and Burlington, Ontario, Canada, and is part of the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) highway linking Fort Erie with Toronto.
The 1958 steel bridge is a suspended deck through-arch truss bridge. The approach to the main span has elements of a through-truss bridge, but the arch shape takes the truss higher than the roadway deck, so hangers are used to suspend the deck from the arch truss. The truss bridge is long overall. The main span of is flanked by two back spans each long; there are 72 total approach spans, and the bridge has of vertical clearance below the bottom of the deck. The 1985 bridge, a conventional precast concrete box girder structure, is shorter. The roadway deck for each bridge is 30 m (97 ft) wide. crossing the narrow bar separating Hamilton Harbour and the Port of Hamilton from Lake Ontario. This allows for Great Lakes ship traffic to flow underneath while four lanes of Golden Horseshoe road traffic may flow on top of it, neither disturbing the other. The bridge was designed by John Turner Bell. Construction of the entire Skyway required of steel and of concrete.
The bridge had tolls when constructed, but these were removed December 28, 1973 With the lifting of tolls on the bridge, trucks were then banned from using Beach Boulevard.
When traffic volume became more than the bridge could accommodate in the early 1980s, the bridge was twinned. The 1985 bridge was a conventional precast concrete box girder. When the new skyway (concrete structure) was opened on October 11, 1985, This included the overhead gantry signage for exit 97 on the northbound span of the skyway.
On July 31, 2014, a man driving a dump truck in its raised position crashed onto the top of the bridge frame on the Toronto-bound lanes. The bridge was closed for the weekend to make temporary repairs; permanent repairs to the bridge structure took seven months and cost $1.224 million. The driver was charged with impaired driving and tried in 2016, resulting in a conviction for dangerous driving in March 2016 and a one-year jail sentence. His conviction and sentence were upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal.
See also
- Garden City Skyway
- Gerald Desmond Bridge, a 1968 through-arch in Long Beach with similar design
- List of bridges in Canada