It occurred to me recently that the Solway Street Bridge across Gardiners Creek in Ashburton has been closed for an awfully long time. Bicycle Victoria noted in April last year:
The Solway Street Pedestrian Bridge (Melway 69 B1) has been assessed as potentially unsafe following erosion of the northern-creek embankment during recent storms.
So the bridge was closed—fair enough.
Both Boroondara and Stonnington Councils have been planning to replace this pedestrian bridge and have allocated funding for a new bridge to be built 10m upstream of the existing bridge. Unfortunately, the current bridge has deteriorated at a rapid rate. Work on the new bridge is expected to commence and finish in the second half of 2006.
[Emphasis added]
Now eight months later and beyond the 2006 start/finish date the bridge remains closed. Work on the replacement has not commenced and my information (via Stonnington Council) is that the new bridge was deemed “not an economically viable solution”. So the existing bridge will be “stablised”, with this work scheduled to commence in March.
Well, maybe. But a year does seem a long time to leave a bridge closed in order to carry out a patch-up job, especially when it connects two rather busy bike paths in the Gardiners Creek and the Anniversary Trails…
19 January
I should clarify for folks like Chris L who might not be familiar with the lay of the land at this bridge, that although the Solway St Bridge links two trails, it’s not on a major commuting route—so its prolonged closure has no real impact on commuting cyclists (people walking to the train station maybe, but as eccles points out they have other options not available to cyclists).
The Solway St Bridge is something of an exception—generally the bridges along the Gardiners Creek Trail are excellent, for example the alternative crossing just downstream from Solway St:
And I suspect that if such a closure were required to a bridge on the main commuting route it wouldn’t be left for so long with no action taken—certainly the utility cyclists would cause grief for councillors on both sides of the Creek.
So the bridge is primarily used for recreational purposes (but that’s no reason to neglect its maintenance and repair indefinitely).
5 March
Here’s a letter that recently came my way from Boroondara Council:
12 January 2007
To the Resident
Dear Resident
Solway Street Pedestrian Bridge Closure
The City of Boroondara is committed to ensuring “Roads for Communities” and is undertaking actions that will improve community amenity.
The Solway Street Pedestrian Bridge is one of these projects. It was assessed as potentially unsafe and has been closed since April 2006.
Stonnington Council has been managing this project and unfortunately, this process has taken longer than anticipated. Stonnington officers have revised the completion date and advised that the bridge will be available for use in mid March 2007.
This project envisaged the construction of a new bridge. Due to constraints placed on the project by Melbourne Water, the cost of a new bridge exceeds the project budget. Works will commence shortly to stabilise the creek banks around the existing bridge to make the existing bridge structure safe.
The interim alternate crossing of the creek, downstream of the Solway Street pedestrian bridge, accessed from Winton Road remains the closest crossing point.
If you have any queries regarding the above, please call the Boroondara Traffic and Drainage section on 9278 4549.
Yours sincerely
Steven White
Manager Projects & Strategy
Cc: Cr Halikias-Byrnes
Bicycle Victoria
Boroondara Bicycle Users’ Group
I suspect that it will never get fixed – there’s a way around the problem bridge that’s less than 1km, and a lot of the locals know that you can usually cut across the creek about 400m up stream (unless its been raining a lot) across a concrete weird, so less pressure there too.
Posted by eccles | 19 January 2007, 2:03 pmThis sort of thing is exactly the reason I refrain from relying on bike paths.
Posted by Chris L | 19 January 2007, 2:49 pmI think it’ll probably get a repaired, eventually. It doesn’t reflect well on either council to leave a piece of their infrastructure (even one as minor as the Solway St Bridge) closed and unusable indefinitely. So next election year…
Posted by Treadly and Me | 19 January 2007, 8:11 pmWell worth a look now (Feb 2011)after nature has reconfigured it.
We can expect it to be closed again for several years while the Councils try to think of a plan to outdo their previous achievement!
I think only one bridge ended up in the creek after the storm and you guesssed it – it was the one recently “made safe” at great expense (and inconvenience to pedestrians and cyclists)
Posted by Y Synshiney | 7 February 2011, 11:58 pmYes, I’ve posted some photos on that. I think we can safely expect a new bridge to be opened there sometime in 2013 or 2014.
Posted by Treadly and Me | 8 February 2011, 10:18 am