South Bridge Re-Opens

Archived press release

Date Published: 16/12/11

The bridge is now open to cars - weight limits apply.

Work on the repairs to the bridge to enable vehicles under 3 tonne to use it have been completed. It has been necessary for width restrictions to be put in place which are causing some concern. The following comment by NCC explains the reasoning for this and next steps:

"The reason for the bollards being so close together are to try to ensure, as far as is possible, that vehicles above the weight limit do not attempt to cross the bridge.

Following the damage caused by the water leak in March, NCC could not carry out any repair work until that work was authorised by English Heritage as the bridge is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. They would only allow work in materials which tally with those which might originally have been used, which excluded any steel reinforcement, or the use of cement rather than lime mortar.

Because of these restrictions, at present the bridge can only be rated for vehicles up to 3T in weight. This would not only exclude 7.5T vehicles and larger but also many transit-type vans, which might be rated at 3.5T or above when laden. Given that newer models of car are getting wider than previous equivalents, the difference between many cars and transit-type vans is not great and so the need to exclude vans/trucks from the bridge means that we have no choice but to leave a minimal gap as further damage to the bridge would result in it being closed again. Unfortunately signs alone are not enough to prevent heavier vehicles from using the bridge, hence we had to introduce a width restriction as well as a physical barrier to larger vehicles.

How wide to set the posts was mainly based on experiences from a very similar situation at Geddington Road in Corby. Here we have an ongoing situation where another bridge with a structural weight limit continues occasionally to be used by hgvs despite an array of concrete barriers on each approach, and a multitude of signs at each end of the road making it clear that there is no through route for hgvs. The barriers at Geddington Road were initially set at about 2.5m-2.6m apart, but this allowed larger vehicles, especially 7.5T and even articulated lorries, to attempt to pass through with recurring problems when the vehicles got stuck, and of course the ongoing risk of heavier vehicles using a weak bridge. The barriers were recently reset to a distance of 2.3m, and we hope this will have some effect in deterring larger vehicles.

It is certainly advisable to slow down well below 20mph to pass through the posts and by doing so it is possible to pass through the gap. The retiming of the traffic lights is something that is being considered to ease any congestion, although it may be that monitoring is being done to first assess what timings would work best.

Discussions with English Heritage are continuing, with a view to gaining authorisation for further work to allow the weight limit to be raised. If that happens then it may be possible for the posts to be reset at an appropriate width. However, in reality we would not expect this to be in the near future. In the meantime, all we can do is to continue to monitor the situation and review what limited courses of action might be open to us. Given the parameters we have to work to in this case, we have to take every possible step to prevent unauthorised vehicles from crossing the bridge".

Further updates will be posted when available.