REPLACING THE DEMERARA HARBOR BRIDGE

Sep 27, 2017 Editorial

During the 1970s, business on the West Bank of Demerara was booming and the economy was expanding rapidly. As a result, the people needed a faster way to travel to the city. Most of the country’s population live within 80 miles of Georgetown and it was important to link these people.
The only thing that separated Georgetown from the West Bank of Demerara and the Essequibo Islands was the Demerara River.
To speed up transportation, the government decided to construct a floating bridge to accommodate the growing business and trade from the West Bank to Georgetown. Commissioned on July 2, 1978, the Demerara Harbour Bridge is a floating toll bridge that crosses the river from Peter’s Hall on the East Bank of Demerara to Schoon Ord on the West Bank. It is exactly 1.25 miles long and has a pedestrian crossing, a raised section that lets small crafts pass and a retractor span that allows larger vessels to traverse the river.
The bridge was designed to last for only 20 years, but after nearly 40 years, it is still in operation which means that it has long outlasted its expected life span.
The reason is that the bridge is a modular design. This means that the sections could be replaced independently and ad infinitum. The bridge no longer has a lifespan.
And while there were varying estimates as to how long the bridge would last, the last administration had delayed the building of a new bridge.
But as it was about to commission a feasibility study for a new bridge, its worst nightmare became a reality in July 2012 when a section of the bridge collapsed, stranding thousands and causing millions of dollars in losses.
The incident led to the urgent need for a new bridge to cope with the increased volume of traffic, especially with the 10,000-plus vehicles being added to the roads annually. The commitment by the last administration to construct a new Demerara River bridge was highlighted during the 2013 National Budget presentation.
The proposed project was to build a four-lane bridge with reinforced concrete for vehicular traffic, with a walkway for pedestrians, a bicycle lane and with navigation and marine aids to prevent ships from colliding with the bridge.
In December 2015, the new government received tenders from several international and local companies to build the new Demerara Harbor Bridge. It was a different plan from the previous one.
In August 2017, the government announced that it would construct a new three-lane bridge with a moveable section for sea going vessels. This bridge would span from Houston on the East Bank to Versailles on the West Bank and cost US $170 million. The construction will begin in 2018 and will be completed by 2020.
There were criticisms when the Demerara Harbour Bridge was constructed; there will be criticisms when this new bridge is constructed. The politics of Guyana is that anything one party builds must attract the criticism of the other.
Already that is criticism of the tender process that led to the selection of the Dutch team to conduct the feasibility study. And in that criticism was the injection of a political consideration.
The political opposition is contending that the site was chosen because a supporter of the coalition government owns land where the bridge will land. This would mean money for that supporter, according to the opposition.
The truth is that the site was selected by independent experts. That was the case when the previous administration conducted a feasibility study and that is the case today. What is good is that with communities growing on both sides of the Demerara River the bridge would be seen as an indispensable communication link. In fact, people would not be able to imagine a life without the bridge.

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