Pontoon Bridge

A pontoon bridge, also called a floating bridge, is a bridge that uses floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel, with the buoyancy of its supports limiting the maximum load it can carry. Most pontoon bridges are temporary structures built for wartime or emergency use, though some permanent civilian examples carry highway traffic, including the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, the Hood Canal Bridge and the Nordhordland Bridge, despite the high maintenance costs and collapse risk that make permanent floating bridges less attractive than conventional construction. Pontoon bridges have ancient origins and have played a role in major military crossings including the Battle of Garigliano, the Battle of Oudenarde, Rhine crossings in the Second World War, the Yom Kippur War, the Iran-Iraq War and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and they remain useful today for sheltered water crossings where pier-based construction is not economical, despite their vulnerability to weather and waves. The source consulted names no single inventor or invention date.