I first mentioned the closure of the Solway St Bridge (in passing) on ANZAC Day—last year, then had a good ol' rant about it January. Well another ANZAC Day has come and gone, and the bridge is still closed.
News has come via Bicycle Victoria and the BV forums that the bridge won't be replaced:
Council has decided to secure the footings of the damaged bridge and reuse the existing bridge structure.
All this delay has even reached the attention of the local rag (on both sides of the Creek):
Children are using fallen branches and stepping stones to cross Gardiners Creek because an unsafe footbridge has been awaiting repair for more than a year.
From what I can tell, there hasn't been too much argy-bargy between the councils but they couldn't get Melbourne Water on board:
Stonnington Council is managing the project, for which Boroondara Council is committed to pay half the cost, acknowledging the bridge is a shared community asset.
Melbourne Water, which manages Gardiners Creek, approved Stonnington Council's revised plan on May 1, and the project is now slated to start this month.
Those guys must love the sound of a deadline as it goes whooshing by…
Theory
I have a bit of a theory about all of this. I think the two councils were planning a mega-bridge that would feed into the long-awaited link between Solway St and Warrigal Rd, but instead of consulting with and involving Melbourne Water, they offered their grand plan as a fait accompli.
The plan (which I acquired from the Boroondara Council web site earlier this year but appear to be no longer available) is a bit unclear, but it was clearly intended to be a huge structure. Note that it would have been high enough for a vehicle to drive underneath it!
Small wonder that the price tag was estimated to be heading towards $1 million. And talk about complicated—I'm inclined to think that Melbourne Water was right to reject the proposal. (I will admit to bias here, because this idea would have forced me to climb a bridge that I don't need to climb and make a tight right-angle turn that I don't need to make.)
I'm no engineer, but I really can't see what's wrong with replacing the existing narrow bridge with a simple wider structure. I think there is the question of inundation by floodwater but there are plenty of bridges downstream that lie lower than this one and they stand up to flood water pretty well.
11 May: More on flooding
On the Boroondara web site there's a quite extensive proposal paper. It makes for interesting (if not exactly rivetting) reading. The proposed (now rejected) new bridge was described as "a 26 metre long footbridge with a width of 2.6 metres providing access over Gardiners Creek" and would "feature balustrading to 1.0 metres height above the finished level of the bridge deck".
In respect of flooding, a key point seems to be that:
The existing footbridge is causing a restriction to water flow due to the narrowness of the banks at this point. Relocating the footbridge a further 6.0 to 8.0 metres upstream will further elevate the footbridge above the creek and reduce restriction to water flow.
Sounds like a pretty good reason to replace the bridge. Especially when high water flows undercut the bridge foundations.
The proposed bridge would have been
an open sided structure that is designed for flood events. The proposed relative levels for the new bridge range from 31.50 AHD (north) to 25.60 AHD (south), compared to 28.60 AHD (north) to 24.29 AHD (south) for the old/existing footbridge. The nominated Melbourne Water flood level (1 in 100 year flood level) is 25.80 AHD while the submitted plans show a flood level of 27.3 AHD. Therefore, due to relocation of the footbridge the relative level of the bridge has been increased between 1.31 metres and 3.3 metres, and thus a far greater proportion of the footbridge will be above the flood level.
Note that on the south side, the new bridge would have been considerably higher than the current bridge is on the higher north side.
The [proposed] footbridge is an open sided structure having minimal impact on water runoff. Increasing the setback of the footbridge from residential properties will reduce flood risk to adjoining occupants. One reason for relocating the footbridge is to lower the gradient as the existing bridge and pathways are relatively steep. Further, the approach ramps have been designed to comply with disabled access requirements.
Surely it would be possible to install a northerly approach to the bridge of a suitable gradient without significantly raising the height of the bridge or requiring the sort of approach ramps that were being proposed?
Propping up the existing bridge seems extremely short-sighted and is a very poor payback for a local community that has been kept waiting for over a year for a substantial improvement.
Thumbs-down all-round on this one.
Yeah, the whole setup is less than ideal and they do need to find a way to reduce the angle of the northern approach to the bridge.
I was a bit surprised when I first read it but according to the proposal on the Boroondara web site, flooding actually is one of the key issues.
Comments
Yeah... those designs seem insane. The right angle turn that the main path has to make, the raised bit from way back into the golf course... i wonder if the golf course raised a fuss.
The main problem with the existing bridge is that the path coming down from solway street is very steep and feeds straight onto the bridge which makes it very hard to safely join the larger bike path, even if you were being responsible. (It also was covered with slippery leaves for much of the year).
A shallower bridge further along the creek might be better suited to joining the anniversary trail up to the gardiner's creek one. I'm sure that the golf course won't be too thrilled about that either, but there's not a lot of locations where it would work. (A shallower bridge at the same location that crossed the bridge at an angle and joined downstream might be ok).
I'm not sure flooding is much a concern. Somewhere I have some photos of gardiners creek in full psycho mode, and that bridge as it stands was still a meter or so off the water's surface at the lower end.