Hull's New Footbridge: From Old Town to...

Hull was named after the river Hull, which runs right through its centre dividing the city into East and West Hull. The Hull rises from several springs west of Driffield and merges with the Humber estuary close to the city centre.

As the Hull approaches the inherently muddy Humber estuary it becomes less and less the kind of water you’d like to go swimming in. To keep your feet dry it has been bridged in some way or another for over 500 years letting both sides of the city develop as one. If Wikipedia can be trusted then there are currently 13 bridges crossing the Hull. Six of them are swing bridges and the newest one of those stirred up some controversy.

Whale-Like Design to Remind of Hull's Maritime History

The design for the comma-shaped bridge won McDowell and Benedetti a contest in May 2006. It is the only bridge in Britain that allows pedestrians and cyclists to stay on it as it opens to let through ships. There is enough space for up to 750 people as it swings open. The hub of the moveable structure is not yet occupied but it is likely to turn into a café.

It was only completed very recently and cost approximately £7.5 million. It connects Hull’s Old Town at Scale Lane in the West to a rather unused industrial area in the East. The idea was that this new connection would help increase footfall in Old Town and bring some life to the East Bank.

However, I haven’t had much of a reason to cross the bridge. The only time I venture to the Eastern part of town is to go to the post office to pick up packages I missed or to go to The Deep, for which I usually cross a different bridge closer to the Humber. The new footbridge has also been cynically named the “Bridge to Nowhere” and I hope that rather bleak name won’t stick. However, the £100 million project to renew the East Bank with apartments, shops and leisure centres fell through. So in many ways it looks like the bridge is just a very convenient way for visitors of the Premier Inn to get to town quicker. It also opens up an alternative route to The Deep... so that’s nice. I’m not sure if it is £7.5 million kind of nice, though.

The fact that the bridge opened three years late doesn’t fill me with too much confidence either! The people of Hull seem frustrated but take it with humour:

If you'd given me £7.5m in 2010, I could have built it by hand by now. 

Obviously, I'm not very technically minded, so it wouldn't have swung much – but, crafted out of wattle, dawb and leftover Larkin toads, it would have at least been able to ferry Lenny Henry back to his bed at the Premier Inn at night. 

Crikey, for £7.5m I could have engineered some sort of Angry Birds-style catapult to propel people back into the hotel's lobby. 

Source

Reasons for the massive delays were numerous: problems with the bridge’s rolling tracks and handrail, adverse weather, the economic downturn, and the abolition of Yorkshire Forward, which was one of the key funding bodies. I’m surprised the bridge was ever finished!

Here is to hoping that all this waiting has not been in vain. Hull’s Old Town certainly deserves more recognition as it is a lovely area with some superb pubs and museums. It’s a shame that so many visitors miss it. It’d be great if the East Bank of the Hull would become a bit more interesting to encourage people to use the bridge. We’ll just have to wait and see!