Lauttasaari Bridge

About

The Lauttasaari bridge (Finnish: Lauttasaaren silta, Swedish: Drumsö bro) is a bridge in Helsinki, Finland, over the Lauttasaarensalmi strait. The bridge connects the island of Lauttasaari to mainland Helsinki. The mainland end is in Salmisaari in the Ruoholahti district, with the Porkkalankatu street leading to the city centre. In Lauttasaari, the street Lauttasaarentie leads west from the bridge.

The current bridge was built in late December 1969. The bridge is 317 metres long and 23.5 metres wide, made of reinforced concrete, and its span is 56.6 metres.

The bridge is an openable bascule bridge, but nowadays it is only opened on rare exceptional occasions. Formerly it used to be opened regularly to allow large cargo ships to transport coal to the pier of the Salmisaari power plant underneath it. Nowadays the coal harbour of the plant has been moved to the south of the bridge, where the coal is transported to a larger storage space underneath the plant, built in 2004, via an underground tunnel.

The bridge has also become a popular spot for fishing Baltic herring.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.