How Leonine Features Enhance Bridge Capacity: A Short History of Traffic Engineering

摘要

Statuary traffic-enhancing devices (statues for improving traffic flow) were well understood in antiquity. Statue types included "leonine" (those of lions), "feline" (wildcats), "bovine" (cattle), "elephantine" (Republicans), and "asinine" (public figures of various types). Lion gateways on bridges and other transport facilities appeared in the earliest recorded history of transportation. Perhaps the oldest and best known is the Sphinx near Cairo. In ancient times, Greeks and Romans installed lions on hundreds of bridges.