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Sep 29, 2013 News
Management of the Demerara Harbour Bridge (DHB) will soon be in possession of a prefeasibility study that examined three options for the location of a new Demerara Harbour Bridge.
The study was expected this month-end but the consulting firm did not forward the document to the Ministry of Public Works.
This is according to the Rawlston Adams, General Manager of the DHB at a recent press conference to update media operatives of a pivot changing exercise on the 35-year-old structure.
He said that the prefeasibility study is being done in collaboration with the Public Works Ministry. “We have looked at three locations: one at the existing site; the other at New Hope (East Bank Demerara) going across to Patentia, West Bank Demerara; and we looked at Versailles going across to Houston,” he said.
He explained that because it is a prefeasibility study all options had to be examined but DHB desires a fixed high level bridge.
Adams said that the consultant is currently revising comments made by the DHB and Ministry. A completed report would be presented to Transport Minister Robeson Benn, who would forward it to Cabinet for the way forward.
In a recent interview with this publication Adams indicated that the location from Versailles to Houston seems to be a preferred choice. Building a structure at the existing location is not a priority since the bridge spans the widest part of that section of the Demerara River. Hence, it would be too costly a project.
At this year’s Engineering Conference, Adams said that the preferred location to erect the 2.25 kilometers structure is from Versailles to Houston. The company contracted for this project must have the capacity to design and build.
Though the Public Works Ministry will not design the structure it has outlined its requirements which include a reinforced concrete bridge with at least four lanes; pedestrian walkways; navigational channel of 100 metres; air draft of 50 metres; and maximum gradient of five percent.
To effectively deal with the current traffic congestion that affects users of the bridge face and commuters of the East Bank Demerara thoroughfare, Adams believes a new bridge would be the solution. He said traffic congestion is a problem not only plaguing DHB but the entire East Bank Demerara
“In our calculation traffic is growing by eight percent per annum over the past four years. We have done our little bit here in facilitating the double lane exercise but that is limited in terms of scope as the traffic continues to increase that becomes more and more inefficient so there is little we can do outside of what we have already done and all the initiative. We have taken to deal with the condition and our only solution is to build a new bridge”, he said.
Another measure undertaken by the bridge to curb the traffic congestion is changing the timing of morning retractions. Adams said that the bridge would no longer have 5:30hrs retraction. Retractions would be at 5:00hrs. And, instead of the bridge being opened for 90 minutes it would now be for one hour.
Even with increased traffic leading to higher income maintaining the existing structure, which has to be maintained daily is beyond the reach of DHB. The bridge depends heavily on Government subvention.
According to Adams, revenue has been increasing between five and seven percent every year but that is not enough to cover operational costs which amount to about $1billion annually. And, only recently the bridge was able to earn $400M.
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