The Press

Bridge repairs with eye on future

- Liz McDonald

The bridge that severed the South Island’s main transport link will be repaired so it can be easily relevelled in future.

The State Highway 1 bridge over the Ashburton River was closed when heavy flooding caused a pier to slump three weeks ago.

Monitoring has since shown the pier has settled after slumping by 13 centimetre­s.

The bridge is open with a 30kmh speed limit to all but the heaviest and largest vehicles, which must take an inland detour.

Jessica McFarlane, a network manager at Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, said they hoped to close the bridge between 11pm yesterday and 4am today to install electronic monitoring devices.

These would allow the bridge to be monitored remotely for movement, rather than having to be closed for monitoring to be done.

The work was reschedule­d twice in the past week because of rain.

McFarlane said the agency hoped to sufficient­ly smooth the dipped section of the bridge deck so the 50kmh speed limit could be restored.

At that point, it would reassess access for oversize and overweight vehicles, she said.

The repairs were due to be completed by August.

‘‘In the coming two months we will be jacking the bridge to the right level at that [slumped] pier and fixing it at the right height,’’ McFarlane said.

‘‘We will leave the jacks in places so if we need to make any adjustment­s in future, they can be made easily.’’

The bridge’s closure cut off the road link between the top and bottom halves of the South Island after the flooding in late May. Smaller inland crossings over the river could not be reached because of severe damage to rural roads.

The bridge was subjected to stress testing before it reopened initially to lighter vehicles and then to bigger vehicles during daylight hours.

Trucks up to 50 tonnes were allowed back on the bridge on June 10.

A business case for a second bridge crossing the river at Ashburton was completed in September 2020. Reports into the feasibilit­y of a second bridge date back to 2006.

 ?? STUFF ?? Trucks at the ready to stress test the damaged Ashburton Bridge earlier this month.
STUFF Trucks at the ready to stress test the damaged Ashburton Bridge earlier this month.

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