Thursday 2 April 2015

Church Road bridge latest

Unfortunately the council is still waiting for BT to remove their last cables from the temporary bridge. Once they have done that council workers can take that structure down and tidy up the verges and the river bank. At that time they will also sort out the copings and a couple of other minor snagging items like the mastic seals in the parapet walls. Officers will continue to push BT for a date for them to complete.

Tonight (Thursday 2nd April) officers are due to carry out a load test on the bridge, starting at 10pm to minimise traffic disruption. The purpose of the load test is to gather performance data to compare with predicted structural performance. The University of Bristol want the information for their academic research which will then eventually feedback in to the industry and help promote the use of these Fibre Reinforced Polymer structures.

The test is not being carried out because officers have any concerns over the bridge.

The test will be carried out under traffic signals but there may be some delays to motorists for a few minutes while lorries run slowly across the bridge and the strain gauges, accelerometers and deflection sensors collect the data.

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