Victoria Bridge, Brisbane

The Victoria Bridge is a vehicular and pedestrian bridge over the Brisbane River. The current bridge, opened in 1969, is the third permanent crossing erected at this location. It is shared by vehicular traffic, pedestrians and cyclists.Victoria Bridge connects South Brisbane near the South Bank Parklands and Queensland Cultural Centre to the Brisbane central business district (CBD) at North Quay.Half of the road space on the bridge is now given over to the South-East Busway. In the Brisbane City Centre Draft Masterplan, a new crossing immediately adjacent to the Victoria Bridge, tentatively named the Adelaide Street Bridge (the name of the connecting street in the CBD), will carry pedestrian, cyclist, bus and possibly light-rail traffic, freeing up the Victoria Bridge for general road traffic as it was before.Former bridges at this siteConstruction of a bridge across the Brisbane River was first agreed to in 1861. The newly formed Legislative Assembly of Queensland forced the council to pay for the costs. £70,000 worth of borrowings was acquired from the Bank of Queensland. Work first began on the foundations for the first bridge across the Brisbane River on 22 August 1864. The bridge, known as the Brisbane Bridge, was a tolled, timber structure which opened in June 1865. It was a temporary structure which was to be replaced by a more elaborately designed, iron lattice-girder bridge. The Bank of Queensland failed in July 1866, bringing about a halt to funding for the project. The state government was reluctant to take on responsibility for the bridge's construction because it didn't want to incur debt. The timber bridge quickly succumbed to marine wood worm and began to progressively collapse. The council wasn't able to fully repair the structure and its remnants took two years to fall away into the river.