Nicolás Avellaneda Transporter Bridge, Transporter bridge in La Boca, Argentina.
The Nicolás Avellaneda is a steel transporter bridge over the Riachuelo, linking La Boca in Buenos Aires with Isla Maciel in Avellaneda. Its tall lattice gantry carries a suspended gondola that ferries pedestrians, carts, cars and trams across the water.
Construction was authorised in 1908 and carried out by the Ferrocarril del Sud, with Buenos Aires Province bearing the cost. The bridge opened on 31 May 1914 and carried up to 17,000 workers a day between La Boca and Isla Maciel. It ran until 1960, was saved from scrapping in 1993, restored in 2017 and reopened for tourism in 2023.
The bridge appears in paintings, photographs, and films as a symbol of Buenos Aires' industrial waterfront heritage. It has become a familiar image in local art and the city's visual memory.
After renovation work, the bridge is now open to visitors and offers views of the river and surrounding area. You can walk across or ride the gondola to experience the structure and waterscape up close.
The bridge's deliberately oversized steel structure results from a design using low-resistance iron, requiring a high safety coefficient. Its mechanism ran on two 50 HP electric motors, one main and one backup. The suspended platform measured 8 by 12 metres and could be controlled from the platform itself or from the machine house.
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