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Rob Marchak sees a line of poetry in the new stress-ribbon bridge now under construction in Terwillegar Park.

With a concrete bridge deck just 40 centimetres thick, it will cut a pencil thin line from one bank to the other, draping like an old-fashioned rope suspension bridge between two pillars in the water, said Marchak, the city’s project lead for all the River Valley Alliance projects.

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It’s the first time the technology — now increasingly popular in Europe — has come to Edmonton, and only the second time in Canada.

“It ends up giving us this really beautiful structure that just sits there,” said Marchak. “It’s minimalist.”

City of Edmonton, supplied

“It’s like a suspension bridge except that the cables are inside the deck,” said Reed Ellis, head of bridge design globally for Stantec, which designed it. “That gives it a very slender appearance and that’s part of the appeal.”

The $24-million bridge will connect pedestrians and cyclists in Terwillegar Park with the paths just below the Edmonton Country Club. It’s one of the last pieces needed to create a continuous river valley pathway from Fort Saskatchewan to Devon.