The critical structural purpose of the towers on the Bolte Bridge is to support the vast ego of the State Premier who commissioned it. Some other civic architecture of his time in office will give you the idea...
There should be a giant martini glass to go with the cheese stick. To go first class, you could surround the rim with a walkway to support people slurping it up. Or is that "lapping"? "10 dollars for all you can drink!! Step right this way." "No, ma'am. It is NOT vodka. You'll be wanting Darwin for that beverage."
I'm not seeing the escalators mentioned earlier. So it does look like users will be getting some good exercise by going up and down about 2.5 stories (25').
The roof is supposed to protect users from rain. Notable it is that you can't walk under the middle of the roof, where you could maximize rain protection. I guess it doesn't rain much in Florida. Or maybe it all falls straight down, so there's no need to hide under the middle of the roof.
Here's a very stupid one outside of Charlotte NC. The decorative stays were meant to mimic a sail boat (this area is near Lake Norman). IIRC, the city council (or whoever wanted to add these decorations) had a good bit of back and forth with NCDOT as the original design with much larger 'masts' and stays violated some sort of DOT code, so they compromised with this eyesore. Serves no purpose other than decorations, and the decorations ended up looking ridiculous.
The link which epoxybot provided sheds a lot of light on the design, structural and otherwise. Quite impressive, much more so than the rendering in the Herald. Looks like FIU is actively favoring its alumni, as most of the BCC people went there.
Yeah, I gave a link (12 May 1139) to the Bolte Bridge. Thanks for the photo. The only things they missed, since it is Melbourne, is the outer posts. Behinds count, too.
Maybe not escalators, though I think that was in the original bridge, but there almost certainly lifts / elevators in those yellow buildings at the ends.
Took a long time to get there but slide 30 item 6 "Cables and pylons will redundantly (not sure what that means really) to carry only additional live loads (vibrations / events).
Personally I have difficulty believing anyone is actually going to "hang out" on an open bridge deck over an 8 lane highway with metal grills on the side to stop you falling off / throwing things.
Slide 32 has all the gory details of the tower structure and the construction sequence which makes it clear that the wire structure is essentially decorative.
Slide 30 onwards is where you want to go.
Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.
