Mission Railway Bridge

Mission Railway Bridge
Coordinates	49°07′33″N 122°18′00″W / 49.1258°N 122.3°W / 49.1258; -122.3
Carries	Trains (shared with automobiles between 1927 and 1973)[1]
Crosses	Fraser River
Locale	Between Mission, BC and Abbotsford, BC
Owner	Canadian Pacific Railway
Characteristics
Design	Swing bridge
Total length	533 m (1,749 ft)
Longest span	70 m (230 ft)[2]
No. of spans	10
Clearance below	4.9 m (16 ft)
Rail characteristics
No. of tracks	1
History
Construction end	1909
Statistics
Daily traffic	31 freight trains (2026 projection) 50 freight trains (2030 projection)[3]
Location

The Mission Railway Bridge is a Canadian Pacific Railway bridge spanning the Fraser River between Mission, and Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada.

Replacing an earlier bridge built in 1891,^[4] which was the first and only bridge crossing of the Fraser below Siska in the Fraser Canyon until the construction of the New Westminster rail bridge in 1904, it was constructed in 1909 by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). The Mission Railway Bridge is supported by 13 concrete piers and is approximately 533 metres in length. Before completion of the Mission highway bridge, highway traffic to and from Matsqui and Abbotsford with Mission used the bridge as a one-way alternating route, with traffic lights at either end to control direction. Rail traffic often held up car crossings, causing long and often very lengthy waits, which were a part of daily life in the Central Valley until the new bridge was completed.

Beneath the bridge's north abutment is an important river-level gauge monitored during the annual Fraser freshet. The bridge is also the location of the end of the Fraser's tidal bore - downstream from the bridge the river is increasingly influenced by tidal influences from the Georgia Strait.

The bridge has a speed limit of 10 kilometres per hour (6.2 miles per hour).^[1]