Critical repairs to Bristol's Floating Harbour bridges will cost millions to fix
A bridge in Bristol is so corroded it could collapse and cause the loss of the Floating Harbour, with potentially fatal consequences, according to the city council.
The Chocolate Path next to Cumberland Road has been closed since January last year after it collapsed along with 40m of the embankment wall and Heritage railway into the River Avon New Cut.
It's one of nearly a dozen structures in the city’s man-made waterways in “critical” need of repair or replacement in the next few years at a cost of around £14.35million.
The council has already started repairing the Chocolate Path along with stabilising the Cumberland Road. Both are due to reopen to full traffic next summer.
This bridge alone will cost £1million.
Bristol City Council say they are keeping a close eye on other aging structures in the Floating Harbour, New Cut and Feeder Canal over the next two years using a further £1.5million approved by the cabinet on Tuesday 9 March.
In a report presented to the meeting, the Chocolate Path's steel girder is so corroded it could collapse.
According to the document: “Collapse of the structure poses risk to life, reputational risk, financial risk and loss of function of Underfall sluice gates.”
The embankment walls along the Floating Harbour, New Cut and Feeder Canal are around 200 years old.
The waterways were built in the early 1800s to stop ships on the River Avon being grounded at high tide, allowing them to stay afloat while loading and unloading their cargo.
The council has found 68 parts of the aging retaining walls are in a “critical” or “serious” structural condition, which means they could break within the next five years.
The council will use £500,000 of the funding approved to immediately start monitoring their status, and £1million to undertake further structural and geotechnical investigations.
The local authority's cabinet also approved an extra £2.5million needed to complete the work to stabilise Cumberland Road last night, taking the total cost of the project to £11.5million.
Credit: Amanda Cameron, Local Democracy Reporting Service
Read more: