Revamping the Burnside Bridge: A Skater’s Perspective on Preservation and Innovation

There just wasn’t much out there, so my dad was a carpenter, and he had access to some wood, and I was pretty crafty with it, so I made ramps. Keeping it simply put, the Burnside Bridge that was built in 1926, which is 98 years ago today, is not earthquake resistant in today’s standards, primarily due to the pillars containing very little steel reinforcement. Same pillars that a lot of the skate park is built up onto today. Soils under the east approach liquefy after shaking, accelerating the collapse of support columns. It’s a cool place to skate, but the park is built around bridge columns that would need to be reinforced if we tried to fix the old bridge. If we build a new long span bridge, it can be built over the park, preserving it for future use. We could even keep these old bridge columns to remind us of the old bridge. Of course, the park would need to be closed during construction.