No longer wobbly
Wednesday 6 February 2002
Hugh Pearman has written a readable piece for The Sunday Times, Wobbly no more: testing Foster’s Millennium Bridge, about live testing of London’s newest pedestrian bridge after repairs. During a charity walk soon after it was opened, the bridge had a sickening sway. It was closed while the engineers sorted out the problem, at a cost of 20 months and £5 million. Pearman enjoyed taking part in the test:
We departed, happy in the knowledge that we had participated in a great British tradition. That’s the tradition that dictates that you’ve got to have a good idea, get it wrong first time out, then cook up an ingenious, Heath Robinson solution. Like all those under-developed British Leyland cars of the 1970s where the customers were unknowingly carrying out much of the company’s testing for them.