A city report recommends tearing down the iconic Traffic Bridge and replacing it with a modern replica.
The highly-anticipated report, released Wednesday and set for debate Monday night by council, says the bridge should be replaced with a modern steel truss replica with wider lanes, at a cost between $27 million and $34 million.
A modern replacement “balances the needs of the community while reducing engineering and financial risks,” the city report says.
The entire structure, including three-metre-wide bike and pedestrian walkways on either side and significantly wider traffic lanes, would be close to double the width of the current bridge, at roughly 13.5 metres.
“One hundred years from now the new bridge will be the historic bridge,” Mayor Don Atchison said in an interview.
“This is a bridge right now that we’re not sure how much work needs to be done on it (to save it). We know 60 to 70 per cent of the bridge cannot be saved already. So when we start working with the rest of it. . . maybe it’s 100 per cent, we don’t know, and the costs can escalate. If it ends up being $50 or $60 million, people are going to say, ‘Why would you have done that?’ ”
The city’s administration is recommending a design-build process that would ensure a new bridge would be designed to meet modern engineering standards and incorporate the “heritage and architecture of the existing bridge.”
The bridge would cost $130,000 less per year than a rehabilitated Traffic Bridge, the report says. It would be built on refurbished piers, which need $4 million of work to bring them up to the 80-year lifespan expected for any of the options.
Increasing the width of the bridge will allow fire trucks and buses to use the bridge, which isn’t currently allowed, and will reduce the chance of sideswipe collisions, the city report says.
The other remaining options for the closed-down bridge — rehabilitate the 103-year old structure for $24 million to $34 million or replace it with a conventional girder and deck bridge for between $26 million and $35 million — are not recommended in the report but could be revived if they receive majority support from council.
Preserving the Traffic Bridge had benefits, the report said, mainly as a heritage icon. The city’s founding bridge, it’s also the last surviving Parker through truss bridge. As such, the city could access senior government funds for national historic recognition it may otherwise not be able to.
But it wasn’t recommended because of the high risk of cost increases, more expensive annual maintenance and the risks with the old steel not being up to modern standards.
The city will have to come up with a strategy either through borrowing or other government programs.
The future of the bridge has become one of the most polarizing issues in the city since it closed in late-August after inspectors found it was at risk of collapsing.
The closure expedited an ongoing public consultation process that narrowed the bridge future to three options.
Meanwhile, opposition among heritage groups is growing to any option that doesn’t save the Traffic Bridge in its original design.
The entire core faculty of the University of Saskatchewan’s planning program — Ryan Walker, Avi Akkerman, Jill Gunn and Robert Patrick — co-signed a letter urging council to give the bridge official heritage designation and rebuild it according to its original design.
“A decision by (council) to re-construct the current bridge according to its authentic heritage characteristics will be looked back on as an investment in the public history of this city,” the planning professors write.
dhutton@thestarphoenix.com
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