Alignment issue spurs emergency closure of Demerara Harbour Bridge

Mar 15, 2017 News

…more anchor blocks to be installed at retractor span

An emergency closure of the Demerara Harbour Bridge was warranted yesterday in order to address a defect that had left the crossing out of alignment most of the day before and part of yesterday morning.

Traffic flowing across the Demerara Harbour Bridge after the unscheduled closure yesterday.

According to General Manager of the Harbour Bridge, Mr. Rawlston Adams, the defect occurred during the scheduled 05:00 hours opening of the bridge on Monday. However, because of an inadequate workforce on Monday, Adams said that it was not possible for the defect to be addressed, then.
With the services of a full workforce yesterday, Adams said that moves were engaged to address to the problem. “We had an issue with the alignment of the retractor span and we had to close the bridge to sort it out,” Adams explained.
This essentially resulted in an unscheduled opening of the bridge at 10:30 hours resulting in the back up of traffic on either side of the bridge.
Adams yesterday disclosed, “It took us about one and a half hours to correct [the problem]…All we did this morning [yesterday] was to relieve the tension on various winches so that we could have brought the bridge back to alignment using the tide.”
The General Manager revealed, “We’ve noticed that we will have to install some anchor blocks at the retractor span so that we can do some better adjustment of the retractor span. We are in the process of handling that.”
In response to a question as to whether the problem should be a cause for concern, Adams assured, “People shouldn’t panic. Traffic was running on the bridge all day [Monday]. It’s just that it was out of line and that can put some strain on the winches so what we did was adjust the winches to bring it back into alignment.”
The present Demerara Harbour Bridge (DHB) structure crosses the Demerara River four miles (6.4 km) south of Georgetown from Peter’s Hall, East Bank Demerara (EBD) to Schoonord, West Bank Demerara (WBD).
It is a vital link between the East Bank Demerara and Georgetown, especially in light of the many housing developments springing up along the West Bank of Demerara prompted by the amount of land and the prices available. However, regular traffic congestion has caused much frustration to road users who sometimes suffer hour-long delays.
The existing two-lane floating bridge was constructed in 1978 by the United Kingdom firm, Thomas Storey Engineers Limited. It had an initial life of 20 years. From 1995 to 1998 the bridge underwent major rehabilitation by the Damien Ship Yards of the Netherlands at a cost of US$9M and was given an extended life of 15 years (from 1995).
At present the Demerara Harbour Bridge Corporation (DHBC) carries out intensive annual maintenance and element replacement activities on the bridge structure.
The bridge through its toll has over the years been raking in millions of dollars in revenue.
However, there are plans apace for a new Demerara River Bridge. In fact it was just last year that a price proposal was submitted by Trevor Hamilton and Associates to the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) for the consultancy to conduct a feasibility study and design for the new Demerara River Bridge. A price proposal is submitted after technical proposals would have been evaluated.
This publication was able to ascertain that the entity was not among the 27 foreign and local consultant bids which had originally been opened for the project on December 8, 2015.
The Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MPI) had invited fresh Expressions of Interest (EoI) from local and foreign consultants for a feasibility study and design for the new bridge in 2015.
A pre-feasibility study was once done by Ministry of Public Works under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic, Robeson Benn, in 2013. It had examined the cost and benefits of three sites.
The new study would have enhanced old pre-feasibility proposals, which the current administration had said lacked several components.

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