Pedestrians to be banned from span
Forks Road Bridge needs to come down, city staff tell councillors after public forum
Forks Road Bridge will be closed to pedestrian traffic before Christmas, Welland’s manager of engineering services told city council Tuesday night.
“We’ve been advised that closing it would be in our best interest,” Chris Anders said.
He said there’s concern about added weight on the now-closed bridge due to snow amassing on it. There is no access to the structure to allow for plowing.
There’s already concern the bridge may not be able to hold its own weight and could collapse within a year and 16 months.
“That’s an estimate … it’s very difficult to predict how quickly the structure is weakening. The time could be less or more,” said Anders. “We’d look at removal of the structure so it wouldn’t collapse or fail.”
The structure, formerly known as Bridge 18, was closed Nov. 2 to all vehicle traffic after it was found corrosion was spreading quicker than anticipated, even after repairs carried out in 2016.
In his presentation, and later in a report, Anders presented two options to council — one of which was to tear down the structure and the associated piers and not replace it at a cost of about $4 million or to tear it down and replace it with a steel and slab bridge at a cost of nearly $13 million or more, depending on the state of its piers.
He said more testing is needed on the two piers in the water to see what state they are in and to see if they could support a horizontal load if the city were to fill in the banks beside them. The piers were designed to stand up to the vertical load of the bridge.
Councillors heard the city could also look at a causeway, as suggested by residents at a public meeting inside city hall earlier Tuesday.
A prefabricated bridge was ruled out, despite a lower cost, because there would be no bike lanes or sidewalk and it would have less of a lifespan, only 50 years as compared to the 75-year lifespan of a steel and slab bridge. Building a bridge alongside the current structure and later sliding it over was also ruled out due to much higher cost, said Anders. He said a steel and slab structure gave the city the best value and
longevity.
Councillors seemed supportive of tearing down the existing structure. Ward 3 Coun. John Chiocchio wanted to see council pass something Tuesday night. He was concerned about the bridge falling into the water.
Ward 6 Coun. Bonnie Fokkens said she was leery of council passing anything quickly on the demolition of the bridge, but stressed that it needs to be replaced.
Longtime Dain City resident Vi Vrbanac was just one of more than a hundred area residents who came to the 90-minute-long public session before councillors’ meeting. She is also pushing for a new bridge.
Said Vrbanac: “We want to see it happen as soon as possible.”