On 2012\10\16 22:48, Graham Harrison wrote:

I've sometimes wondered if such 'awkwardness' is deliberate. A slope,
or regular steps, can be taken at a run. Designs such as this are more
difficult to move over quickly and tend to slow the flow down which
might be seen as safer.

I can't help thinking that a cable car would have been cheaper. Although
one might think that machinery would be more expensive than a stationary
lump of steel, the sheer quantity of steel in a footbridge must cost
more than a little gondola, two poles, a wire and a motor. Footbridges
make sense when you have a constant or occasionally strong flow of
people, but I doubt if this footbridge ever sees more than one person in
an hour, and so the vast majority of its structure spends the vast
majority of its time merely holding itself up. I have no idea of the
actual costs though.