Tudor: More bridge repairs in the works

Barbadians are being assured that while work is underway to repair old bridges in the Scotland District, the Government will be intensifying the rehabilitation of others across the island.

Minister of Transport and Works Santia Bradshaw gave that undertaking on Tuesday during the Estimates Debate in Parliament.

Currently, the Government is carrying out a multimillion-dollar project to rehabilitate roads in the Scotland District in collaboration with the Chinese Government and China National Complete Import and Export Corporation Limited (COMPLANT).

“While we are going to do some works under the Scotland District programme we also intend . . . to look at the bridges that the ministry will also have to carry out works on. You will see in the Estimates that in addition to an allocation for Pie Corner [in St Lucy] and Bawdens bridge [in St Andrew], both of which are using precast structures to be able to carry out the works a lot faster, we are also allocating some funds for Dodds bridge [in St Philip] as well,” she said.

Referring to a survey that was conducted in 1985, Bradshaw said there were more bridges that needed rehabilitating, many of them now inoperable. 

She said her ministry recognised that an “aggressive” programme using precast structures to bring those bridges back into operation was needed. 

Noting that it costs $5 million to repair a bridge, the Transport Minister said that Government was using “a combination of approaches, both in terms of the funds under the COMPLANT project [and] also internally from the ministry’’ to complete the national bridge repair programme. 

She added that repairs to the bridges in Pie Corner, Bawdens and Dodds should be executed this financial year and based on the level of deterioration of other bridges across the island, the Government would have to repair them in phases.

Bradshaw was responding to a question posed by Chairman of Committees and Member of Parliament for St Lucy Peter Phillips about the resumption of work on the bridge at Pie Corner. 

He said that residents there and in surrounding areas were concerned since the rainy season was approaching and the neighbourhood was flooded in 2019 and 2020 when weather systems affected the island. 

He said work had been on pause for more than
a year.

On that note, deputy chief technical officer of operations in the Ministry of Transport and Works Philip Tudor announced that a temporary bypass road would be constructed there starting next week, which would allow traffic to flow along the bridge that was erected about a year or two ago.

He said the substantive bridge would be demolished and rebuilt.

Tudor did not say how long it would take to create the bypass road or for the work on the old bridge to be done. 

(SZB)