The Daly Overpass isn’t getting overhauled this year, or next year most likely. The province announced on Thursday that the First Street Bridge is in dire shape and work on it will need to be completed before any work on the Daly over on Eighteenth Street gets looked at.
In Saturday’s Brandon Sun (March 15, 2014) the editorial questioning who knew what about the bridge, and when, is a good read. Whether or not there was some political gamesmanship is not the main point of this post, however the question does come to mind.
To me, it appears that the province is buying time on Daly because they are having a hard time getting a plan together. First clue? They still say the bridge needs widening. My feeling is that the people saying that have not actually looked at the bridge. So, let’s take a look.
Through the magic of what is Google Street View we can all look at the underside of said bridge. This picture is from Stickney Avenue looking south towards the “duck plant” building at the corner of Pacific and 18th. That my friends is a bridge that has already been widened. See those steel supports all the way along the left side? Those are holding up the sidewalk that is hanging off the eastern side of the bridge separated from the roadway by Jersey Barriers. That sidewalk is beyond the concrete supports that actually hold up the bridge. I’m no structural engineer, but my guess would be that those supports are at or near their design capacity while still supporting traffic.
My guess is that the province needs time to get a plan in order. A plan that requires expropriating land and demolishing a very large building. I cannot see how they avoid building another bridge beside the existing structure. To do that, they have to knock down the “duck plant” building and force the homeowners at Stickney Ave to move out. This is not going to be an easy task. Eighteenth Street northbound will have to be curved slightly east to meet a new bridge which means cutting through the mini mall parking lot at the corner of Pacific and 18th.
I frankly hope that I am wrong, but to the layperson widening this bridge does not seem possible; twinning will have to happen. I’d love to see someone investigate this further.
In the meantime, with no action on the Daly Overpass anytime soon, perhaps the city should apply for federal funding to help connect Hilton Avenue to 26th Street and send some traffic west, as mentioned in a previous post, “Is the Daly Overpass the Problem?”
