Two new bridges are now open to the public in Toronto's Port

Two new bridges in Toronto's Port Lands area, called the Cherry Street North and Commissioners Street Bridges, are now open for cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. Another bridge, dedicated to a future transit line, will be fully activated later. Both bridges are 57 meters long and will connect the future Villers Island to downtown Toronto. This is a big step forward in redeveloping 500 acres of land.

These new bridges are part of a quartet installed for the $1.25-billion Port Lands Flood Protection project. It aims to reclaim roughly 715 acres from the city's floodplain by restoring the mouth of the Don River between the Ship and Keating channels. The bridges were designed to look similar and to use new building methods and state-of-the-art engineering.

The design team made a special kind of bridge called a hybrid shell-arch bridge. It has curved-tied arches and a flat deck. This kind of bridge saves materials, costs less, and needs smaller foundations. That's important because the ground in the area is not stable, and there are limits on what can be built because of flood protection plans.

It should be outlined that the first Cherry North Bridge left Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on October 29, 2020, and arrived in Toronto 10 days later, while the second arrived in July 2022. The orange-and-white Commissioners Street bridge, part of the Port Lands Flood Protection project, came in two parts in 2021. The first half, 650 tones and 83 meters long, arrived in May, while the second, 560 tones and 69 meters long, came at the end of August 2021. It links Villiers Island to the Port Lands.