Hill Street Bridge mess shows a serious lack of vision

Politicians and others have talked about removing Hill Street bridge in Dundalk almost as long as they have talked about a united Ireland.

The bridge, as we all know, was made redundant well over half a century ago.

In any other walk of life, redundancy means one thing, banishment to the scrap heap, or demolition in the case of a building, or in this instance, a bridge.

It was built to accommodate the rail line between Dundalk’s Clarke station, the Barrack Street goods yard and the railway line to Greenore and Newry.

In fact two bridges were built under which the rail line ran, Hill Street bridge and St. Alphonsus Road bridge.

The latter was taken away over twenty years ago, with little or no disruption to everyday life in that area.

The contractors responsible for that work were W.P. Baldwin & Sons. who at the time were building the Belfry housing estate nearby.

One of two brothers involved in that work, Tommy who sadly died recently, and his brother, Billy put a proposal to the Urban Council at the time for the removal of Hill Street bridge.

They realised that it was a more complicated job, given the heavy volume of traffic on the bridge, and other factors, but having gained the experience of removing St. Alphonsus Road bridge they felt that they had the expertise necessary to complete the job at minimum disruption to normal life in the area.

Their proposal involved building a temporary road round the bridge to take the traffic while the work of removing the bridge was taking place.

Unfortunately that proposal was never acted upon.

Another opportunity was lost to remove the bridge when the old Dundalk Shopping Centre was demolished and the new Tesco store built.

Now it appears that the bridge will never be removed for it appears that the planning permission that would have required Tesco paying a contribution towards removing the bridge has now expired.

The bridge removal has become a topic again because of recently unveiled plans to build a mixed development on Connolly’s field at the junction of the Avenue Road and Hill

Street. If that development does go ahead, then the odds will be considerably lengthened against the bridge ever being removed for building on that Avenue Road side of the bridge would eliminate the opportunity to install a temporary road on that side of the bridge while the work on the bridge was proceeding.

It’s extraordinary then that a bridge which was made redundant over 50 years ago, and which today is a considerable traffic bottleneck, could survive for another fifty years.

Oh for people of vision!