Transporter Bridge

A transporter bridge is a movable bridge that carries a small platform, or gondola, suspended by cables or a steel frame from a tall fixed span, ferrying vehicles and pedestrians across a navigable waterway without ever obstructing the ships passing beneath. The English engine works manager Charles Smith first proposed the idea in 1873 under the name bridge ferry, but councils in Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, and Glasgow all turned his plan down, and it was the engineer Alberto Palacio who built the first working example, the Vizcaya Bridge between Las Arenas and Portugalete in Spain, completed in 1893. The design was adopted most widely in France, which built five, but fewer than two dozen transporter bridges were ever built worldwide and only about twelve remain in operation today, because the type could only carry limited loads and lost its advantage once cars became common enough to make long approach ramps or ordinary ferries more practical.