4 ms·

The bridge is at 52.114667, -102.139722 [1][2], on a road named 'Dyck Memorial Road' (unsigned) [3], west of the hamlet of Swan Plain which lies at the intersec

The bridge is at 52.114667, -102.139722 [1][2], on a road named 'Dyck Memorial Road' (unsigned) [3], west of the hamlet of Swan Plain which lies at the intersection of SK Highway 8 and the aforementioned road. The previous bridge was closed to heavy traffic in late 2017 [4], and the complete replacement was planned over the summer of 2018 [5][6]. The project was tendered and awarded to Can-Struct of Regina, SK, for CAD 325,000 [7]. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/52°06'52.8"N+102°08'23.0"W/ https://www.google.com/maps/place/52°06'52.8"N+102°08'23.0"W... [2] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/256112153 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/256112153 [3] http://myrm.info/333/files/2017/11/RM333_2017_Fall.pdf http://myrm.info/333/files/2017/11/RM333_2017_Fall.pdf [4] http://myrm.info/333/notices/swan-plain-bridge-dyck-memorial-road/ http://myrm.info/333/notices/swan-plain-bridge-dyck-memorial... [5] http://myrm.info/333/notices/swan-plain-bridge/ http://myrm.info/333/notices/swan-plain-bridge/ [6] http://myrm.info/333/notices/dyck-memorial-bridge/ http://myrm.info/333/notices/dyck-memorial-bridge/ [7] https://www.sasktenders.ca/content/public/print.aspx?competitionId=e6768101-7e1f-485a-b973-7cea1cea74bb https://www.sasktenders.ca/content/public/print.aspx?competi...

JamesCoyne 8y ago
Can-Struct looks to be a general contractor. No Engineers or techs listed with them on linked-in. Their website is down right now. best description of the company here: https://swwa.ca/suppliers/can-struct-systems-inc/ https://swwa.ca/suppliers/can-struct-systems-inc/
- niftich 8y ago
  Engineering was done by Inertia Solutions [1][2][3] from Regina, which CBC reports [4] as having the same owner as Can-Struct. Also, archive.org has partial backups [5] of can-struct.ca but are incomplete. From browsing around a bit, it looks like they've designed/built a number of similar bridges, although their others look like shorter spans at an amateur glance. Not that that necessarily means anything. [1] http://www.inertiasolutions.ca/home.html http://www.inertiasolutions.ca/home.html [2] https://www.facebook.com/inertiasolutionsregina/ https://www.facebook.com/inertiasolutionsregina/ [3] https://www.linkedin.com/company/inertia-solutions-inc https://www.linkedin.com/company/inertia-solutions-inc [4] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/clayton-rm-bridge-collapse-1.4827748 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/clayton-rm-bridge-c... [5] https://web.archive.org/web/*/can-struct.ca https://web.archive.org/web/*/can-struct.ca
taxicabjesus 8y ago
Thanks for the google maps link - one of my stars is <14 KM away. I met a lot of Canadians while driving in my cab. A good number have second homes here. My Canadian friend just said she'd taken her horse across the old bridge, which was replaced because water flowed over it during the spring melt. Saskatchewan has a lot of agriculture - they grew wheat, canola, barley, oats, peas, flax, etc. Met this one post-taxi driving. She'd bought a trailer and parked it in Yarnell, just before the hill fire [1][2], and found her way to the rural part of Arizona that I'm currently living in. She has interesting stories and anecdotes. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3829920/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3829920/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarnell_Hill_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarnell_Hill_Fire
- singingboyo 8y ago
  For those who are unfamiliar, saying SK has a lot of agriculture is akin to saying BC has a lot of trees, or the Sahara has a lot of sand. It's true, but also an exercise in understatement - over 2/5ths of Canada's total agricultural output was in SK as of 2016.
aequitas 8y ago
As a European it boggles my mind on how many long and straight roads there are around the bridge. Here in the Netherlands we can't keep a road straight for more than a few kilometers even on new land we created from the sea: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Flevoland/@52.382114,5.3861645,11.75z https://www.google.com/maps/place/Flevoland/@52.382114,5.386...
- friendzis 8y ago
  This MAY be intentional. One of the ideas behind "urbanism" is that in order to reduce vehicle speeds, design speed of a road must be low and the main technical measures are speed bumps, road width and curvature - if you make a road narrow and curvy, it is technically difficult to speed there.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    You get curves like that on the german Autobahn too. The problem is that in Europe, you don't get very far without running into either a hill, a swamp or a town, in which case your options are limited. A hill can only be so steep until the trucks can't go over anymore without dropping to unsafe speeds (60kph are the legal minimum when driving on the Autobahn, trucks need to be able to go faster and do so safely). A swap can be expensive to go over so you might do a slight curve and only go over a small part of it to save money. A town might not allow the autobahn to go through or might only allow it on the outer edges. That's in addition to the fact that lots of roads in Europe are historical, ie, grown from the paths that people have always used between cities, so they don't take a straight, optimal path to begin with.
    - hef19898 8y ago
      Another eeason for this is to keep drivers alert. Even small "course corrections" raise awareness of a driver which is the driving force behind non-straight routes in Europe, besides geography of course. The only rwaly straight sections on the German Autobahn are relicts from the Cold War. The plan was to use them, no joke, together with any parking lots next to them as back-up military airfields. But they are getting rare nowadays.

JamesCoyne 8y ago

Can-Struct looks to be a general contractor. No Engineers or techs listed with them on linked-in. Their website is down right now. best description of the company here: https://swwa.ca/suppliers/can-struct-systems-inc/ https://swwa.ca/suppliers/can-struct-systems-inc/

niftich 8y ago
Engineering was done by Inertia Solutions [1][2][3] from Regina, which CBC reports [4] as having the same owner as Can-Struct. Also, archive.org has partial backups [5] of can-struct.ca but are incomplete. From browsing around a bit, it looks like they've designed/built a number of similar bridges, although their others look like shorter spans at an amateur glance. Not that that necessarily means anything. [1] http://www.inertiasolutions.ca/home.html http://www.inertiasolutions.ca/home.html [2] https://www.facebook.com/inertiasolutionsregina/ https://www.facebook.com/inertiasolutionsregina/ [3] https://www.linkedin.com/company/inertia-solutions-inc https://www.linkedin.com/company/inertia-solutions-inc [4] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/clayton-rm-bridge-collapse-1.4827748 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/clayton-rm-bridge-c... [5] https://web.archive.org/web/*/can-struct.ca https://web.archive.org/web/*/can-struct.ca

taxicabjesus 8y ago

Thanks for the google maps link - one of my stars is <14 KM away. I met a lot of Canadians while driving in my cab. A good number have second homes here. My Canadian friend just said she'd taken her horse across the old bridge, which was replaced because water flowed over it during the spring melt. Saskatchewan has a lot of agriculture - they grew wheat, canola, barley, oats, peas, flax, etc. Met this one post-taxi driving. She'd bought a trailer and parked it in Yarnell, just before the hill fire [1][2], and found her way to the rural part of Arizona that I'm currently living in. She has interesting stories and anecdotes. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3829920/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3829920/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarnell_Hill_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarnell_Hill_Fire

singingboyo 8y ago
For those who are unfamiliar, saying SK has a lot of agriculture is akin to saying BC has a lot of trees, or the Sahara has a lot of sand. It's true, but also an exercise in understatement - over 2/5ths of Canada's total agricultural output was in SK as of 2016.

aequitas 8y ago

As a European it boggles my mind on how many long and straight roads there are around the bridge. Here in the Netherlands we can't keep a road straight for more than a few kilometers even on new land we created from the sea: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Flevoland/@52.382114,5.3861645,11.75z https://www.google.com/maps/place/Flevoland/@52.382114,5.386...

friendzis 8y ago
This MAY be intentional. One of the ideas behind "urbanism" is that in order to reduce vehicle speeds, design speed of a road must be low and the main technical measures are speed bumps, road width and curvature - if you make a road narrow and curvy, it is technically difficult to speed there.
- zaarn 8y ago
  You get curves like that on the german Autobahn too. The problem is that in Europe, you don't get very far without running into either a hill, a swamp or a town, in which case your options are limited. A hill can only be so steep until the trucks can't go over anymore without dropping to unsafe speeds (60kph are the legal minimum when driving on the Autobahn, trucks need to be able to go faster and do so safely). A swap can be expensive to go over so you might do a slight curve and only go over a small part of it to save money. A town might not allow the autobahn to go through or might only allow it on the outer edges. That's in addition to the fact that lots of roads in Europe are historical, ie, grown from the paths that people have always used between cities, so they don't take a straight, optimal path to begin with.
  - hef19898 8y ago
    Another eeason for this is to keep drivers alert. Even small "course corrections" raise awareness of a driver which is the driving force behind non-straight routes in Europe, besides geography of course. The only rwaly straight sections on the German Autobahn are relicts from the Cold War. The plan was to use them, no joke, together with any parking lots next to them as back-up military airfields. But they are getting rare nowadays.