The Eastern Townships region of Canada has at the core of it’s history the Loyalist migration, with the successful American Revolution many residents of the previous American colonies wished to remain loyal to the crown so they migrated to this region and founded the towns that are still there today.

The largest regional road project in a generation is to build a ring freeway around the largest city, Sherbrooke. The main geographic challenge was the crossing of the Massiwippi River and it’s valley. This called for a dual bridge with a 1,000-foot span over the river as well as a rail-line and the only major north-south route in the area. The need to build the new bridge over this busy artery with absolute minimum traffic interruption lead to the decision to go with a fabricated beam design.

The Ministry of Transport has the world’s longest historical records for the use of hot-dip galvanizing in bridges. Galvanizing has always exceeded expectations so HDG was specified for all steel that was galvanizable. In this case it meant all steel was to be galvanized except the over one hundred foot long fabricated main beams themselves. All stiffeners, bracing and overhang structure as well as the rebar for the deck and curbs were hot-dip galvanized. Additionally the bridge rails, signage and drainage systems were also galvanized.

The high capacity and exceptional consistency of the automated galvanizing plant that processed all this steel resulted in the project having zero galvanizing related quality issues or logistics problems. Also, this new bridge completed in the fall of 2020 will alleviate oppressive cross city traffic that had negatively affected commerce and quality of life on the main streets of Sherbrooke and the suburb of Lennoxville. And with hot-dip galvanized steel built into this new ring road these problems are behind them for many decades to come.