Council chiefs have said they are ‘working to encourage’ the contractors repairing a bridge across the River Avon to reopen it ‘as soon as possible’, after they completed the first stage of what could be months more work.
There is still no fixed date for when the Gaol Ferry Bridge, which connects Wapping Wharf on Spike Island with Coronation Road in Southville, will be reopened. Bristol City Council has said they are still working to a schedule which will see the bridge closed for ‘six to nine months’.
It was closed in late August and work finally got underway after a delayed start in September last year, but it looks very unlikely the bridge will be finished and reopen in six months - in February - and may well not reopen in the nine months deadline, which would be in April.
Bristol City Council provided an update to the works, and confirmed the contractors have finished the first stage of the works - which involved installing scaffolding, stripping out the bridge decking and the timber bearers, and then surveying the steel structure of the bridge to determine its condition.
Once the experts have been able to assess the state of the bridge’s steel structure, they are able to work out the extent of the repairs needed - and have now gained approval from the designers on the extent and nature of the repairs.
That has now happened, and the steel stiffeners and bolts have been replaced, but there is still a lot of work to do to repair the bridge, the council has confirmed. Going into February and beyond, the contractors will be covering a section of the bridge with an environmental wrap to stop paint and other pollutants getting into the river for phased grit-blasting to remove corrosion and all paintwork, complete the structural steel repairs, repaint substructure of the bridge in phases, install a new decking system, repaint the super-structure of the bridge in phases, remove the wrap and the scaffolding and fix up other little repair jobs that need doing.
At the end of November, Bristol City Council said it believed the project was still on target to be finished in the timescale stated in September - which would see the work completed by April.
“We'll still work to encourage our contractors to reopen the bridge as soon as possible,” a council spokesperson said.
Since the bridge has been closed, businesses at Wapping Wharf have said it has impacted their trade, with thousands of people no longer passing through on their way from South Bristol to the city centre each day.
There have been calls for a temporary bridge to be installed across the New Cut, but a council spokesperson said that was impractical and would cost so much money, it would mean they may not be able to fix other bridges along the river that need repairing.
“Some residents have suggested the solution of a temporary bridge over the New Cut at Gaol Ferry, like the much smaller one erected during work on Prince Street Bridge in recent years,” the spokesperson said. “Due to the nearly 60 metre span across the river and the need for accessible ramps, this would most likely require the closure of both Cumberland Road and Coronation Road to traffic, cost as much as the repairs themselves and impact our ability to repair and maintain other bridges along the New Cut.
“A floating pontoon is not a viable option because of the changing tides of the river within the New Cut,” they added.
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