Bristol City Council has maintained that work to restore the Gaol Ferry Bridge is still on schedule, but said the contractors hired to do the work still don’t know how big the job is going to be so can’t say when it will be finished.
The pedestrian and cycle bridge that crosses the New Cut River Avon between Southville and Wapping Wharf was supposed to close from June with the work originally meant to take six months. But the contractors Griffiths discovered the 100-year-old suspension bridge was in a worse state of repair than first thought, and that delayed the start of the full closure until August 22.
The timescale was then pushed back to between six and nine months, but now the council said they are still working out how long the repairs will actually take. Traders at Wapping Wharf have urged people from South Bristol to make the extra effort to visit them, and said they are urging the council to ‘explore all possibilities’ to reopen the bridge as quickly as possible, or provide access as quickly as possible.
