Captain Cook Bridge

Heavy traffic can be irritating and can be a big headache to almost all commuters and travelers. It is also one of the major problems in Brisbane since the late 1950s. With the increase of population, more and more vehicles travel through Brisbane’s main traffic passageways which include the Victoria Bridge, the Story Bridge and the William Jolly Bridge.
To alleviate the traffic problems, the Main Roads Department,

together with the Brisbane City Council, conducted a study on the transportation condition of Brisbane. As a result of the study, the Captain Cook Bridge, a part of the South-East Freeway project was constructed.

The construction of the bridge started in 1968 and ended in 1972.

It was inaugurated and officially named Captain Cook Bridge, in honor of the British explorer Captain James Cook, on Dec 13th, 1972.

The inbound bridge was made accessible to vehicular traffic on

Feb 26th, 1973 and then followed shortly by the opening of the outbound bridge.

into the central business district from the southern suburbs of Brisbane. It is where cars and other heavy transportation travel through from the south

going to Brisbane’s CBD. The bridge is the third crossing of the Brisbane River and crosses at the southern bank of the river connecting the river to the Gardens Point which is at the northern bank. The Captain Cook Bridge is consists of two separate yet close bridges, one for each direction, and carries four lanes of traffic. It connects the M3 Pacific Motorway, a motorway running through Brisbane, Queensland, and New South Wales to the M3 Riverside Expressway at the west of the Brisbane’s Central Business district.

With more than one million vehicles each week traveling through this giant bridge, one can say that the bridge has an impressive load-carrying

capacity. Carrying more than 150,000 cars and other heavy vehicles everyday, the Captain Cook Bridge is considered as one of Brisbane’s busiest

traffic bridges. Traffic flow in this bridge varies from day to day depending on the time and day and is usually slower during peak hours and special holidays.

For the past years, the bridge has undergone several reconstruction and development. In October 2006, the Metropolitan District resurfaced the bridge. After 33 years, the original 75mm thick asphalt surfacing was removed and replaced with dense graded asphalt. Furthermore, the bridge was included

in the City Grid Project, an electricity capital works transmission project of Queensland. As part of this project, last July 2006 to Feb 2007, about 3400 holes were drilled to the southbound section of the bridge to attach a gantry which will allow electrical cables to be carried across the Brisbane River.

Though there were news that the drilling had caused wide cracks on the bridge, the bridge remains standing strongly across Brisbane’s River.

The Captain Cook Bridge has made a strong impact on the daily lives in Brisbane which helps reduce traffic and improve the transportation system

of the Brisbane community. These days, the vehicular traffic on the bridge has become simply a daily scene for commuters and people living in nearby houses, buildings and hotels.