‘It needs to come down’: Winnipeg to replace Arlington Bridge

Winnipeg’s iconic Arlington Bridge volition request to beryllium wholly replaced, a caller engineering survey says — not conscionable repaired, arsenic metropolis officials had hoped.

The survey earlier metropolis hallway shows that extending the 112-year-old bridge’s lifespan with reinforcements isn’t possible.

The span has been closed indefinitely since past November.

A projected caller plan — with a terms tag of astatine slightest $166.3 cardinal and a six-year timeline — would region the overpass’s signature slope to marque it easier not lone for drivers, but for pedestrians and cyclists arsenic well.

That number, metropolis officials say, includes the $17 cardinal outgo of taking down the existing bridge.

City nationalist works seat Janice Lukes said Monday that the caller plan mightiness not beryllium the champion span wealth tin buy, but it’ll decidedly beryllium amended than what’s determination now.

“We tin enactment transit buses implicit (the caller design) present and we tin enactment tracks implicit it, truthful I deliberation that’s an added payment — on with the progressive proscription and without the steep incline,” Lukes said.

“I deliberation 1 of the champion things is it’s not going to beryllium annihilating the neighbourhood to the north.”

Lukes said the caller program is an betterment implicit a three-lane 2019 proposal, and that the metropolis can’t spend to support the span closed forever.

“The congestion and the buildup of traffic, it’s precise delayed, precise congested.

“I deliberation wherever the city’s astatine now, successful our fiscal realm, this is what we tin afford, and we’re going to bash it.”

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City engineering manager Brad Neirinck said there’s nary prime astatine this point.

“It’s deteriorated from corrosion arsenic good arsenic different issues, including seized bearings, and we had to undertake attraction work,” helium told 680 CJOB’s The News.

“When we looked astatine whether we could fortify the span and rehabilitate it, adjacent trying to assistance the span up to benignant of enactment a scaffolding underneath it … it couldn’t instrumentality those kinds of loads, truthful it needs to travel down.”

Neirinck acknowledged that the replacement span solves the contiguous problem, but not needfully the city’s needs successful the future.

“Something successful the aboriginal is besides needed successful summation to Arlington Bridge,” helium said.

“There’s much maturation happening successful the North End of the metropolis arsenic good arsenic successful the RMs that are extracurricular the city, truthful there’s going to beryllium much requirements for north-south capableness successful the future.”