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Repair of frequently hit canal bridge likely to cost around £25,000


Alan de Enfield

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Repair of frequently hit canal bridge likely to cost around £25,000 | Craven Herald

 

THE Canal and River Trust is appealing to drivers to take greater care when crossing its bridges after revealing it spends around £1m every year carrying out repairs.

Its Priest Holme canal bridge, between Gargrave and Bank Newton, was badly damaged a year ago when it was hit by a vehicle negotiating the tight bend. At the time, it was waiting to be repaired after being similarly damaged about a year earlier.

The charity says it plans to repair the grade two listed bridge this year, sometime between April and October, at a cost of around £25,000.

 

Among its 2,000 mile network of canals and rivers, including 316 miles in Yorkshire and the North East, the charity looks after 2,800 old bridges. It says the 'hump-back' canal bridges were built 200 years ago when horse-drawn carts, and not motorised vehicles were using the roads.

It says modern vehicles and HGVs cause up to £1m of damage to bridges each year, and the majority are ‘hit and run’, leaving the trust unable to recoup the cost of the damage from drivers’ insurers, and diverting vital funds away from work to conserve the nation’s waterways.

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In any fair and decent world CRT would pay for boat damage and the council/highways authority would pay for vehicle damage.

Very recently we watched a tractor demolish a parapet and do a runner, gave his reg to CRT but I don't know if they were able to make a claim.

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3 minutes ago, MartynG said:

If it's frequently hit perhaps that indicates the  design  is not suited to modern traffic. It may be a claim against vehicle drivers would not succeed. 

 

Of course its not suited to modern traffic, its 200 years old, but its not the bridges fault.

If that logic is valid then thousands of narrow single track country lanes, steep hills and little villages with tight corners would also be outside of the insurance system,   "the accident was not by fault, that house should never have been built right on that corner?????"

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16 minutes ago, dmr said:

 

Of course its not suited to modern traffic, its 200 years old, but its not the bridges fault.

If that logic is valid then thousands of narrow single track country lanes, steep hills and little villages with tight corners would also be outside of the insurance system,   "the accident was not by fault, that house should never have been built right on that corner?????"

Likewise, it's difficult to understand why anyone would build a royal palace under the flight path to a busy international airport.

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11 minutes ago, George and Dragon said:

Likewise, it's difficult to understand why anyone would build a royal palace under the flight path to a busy international airport.

 

Yes I used to think similar when I lived in Eton. You' think they'd have put the airport somewhere else, not so near to my mooring. 

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1 hour ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Shut the road down for "Safety Reasons"  The highways will soon turn up to repair the damage caused by their road fund tax payers!

They'll just repair it the way they do old railway bridges  and fill it with a huge mass of concrete.

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2 hours ago, dmr said:

 

Of course its not suited to modern traffic, its 200 years old, but its not the bridges fault.

If that logic is valid then thousands of narrow single track country lanes, steep hills and little villages with tight corners would also be outside of the insurance system,   "the accident was not by fault, that house should never have been built right on that corner?????"

I like the solution the NT have adopted on one such bridge on the Wey Navigation. They have erected steel pillars such that a vehicle at the correct speed has no difficulty in negotiating them and onto the bridge safely but they protect the bridge in the event of a vehicle losing it at too high a speed (despite warning signs on the approach). The colour(s) of the pillars is testimony that they work! (Indeed I have seen a car lose part of its structure in just such a circumstance and there did not seem to be a surplus of people around being sympathetic!

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I'd imagine CRT will be spending a lot of money repairing the arches damaged by unsuitable craft and those with ridiculous cabin shapes chopping lumps out of them over the next few years. 

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58 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I like the solution the NT have adopted on one such bridge on the Wey Navigation. They have erected steel pillars such that a vehicle at the correct speed has no difficulty in negotiating them and onto the bridge safely but they protect the bridge in the event of a vehicle losing it at too high a speed (despite warning signs on the approach). The colour(s) of the pillars is testimony that they work! (Indeed I have seen a car lose part of its structure in just such a circumstance and there did not seem to be a surplus of people around being sympathetic!

Some years ago on the approach to a railway bridge near me substantial 9 inch heavy duty I-beams were set vertically either side of each traffic lane, to enforce the 7 ft width restriction (which I think was a proxy for a weight restriction). The nearest alternative crossing of the railway was a mile away either side through suburbia, so unattractive to many drivers. Within weeks of being installed these I-beams were splayed back at an angle of about 45 degrees as a result of larger vehicles forcing their way through. Completely ineffective in terms of stopping oversize/weight vehicles. 

In the end the bridge was replaced and the restrictions removed.

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7 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

I like the solution the NT have adopted on one such bridge on the Wey Navigation. They have erected steel pillars such that a vehicle at the correct speed has no difficulty in negotiating them and onto the bridge safely but they protect the bridge in the event of a vehicle losing it at too high a speed (despite warning signs on the approach). The colour(s) of the pillars is testimony that they work! (Indeed I have seen a car lose part of its structure in just such a circumstance and there did not seem to be a surplus of people around being sympathetic!

The NT erected large stone bollards at the approach to Respryn Bridge over the River Fowey, to prevent large vehicles from crossing the bridge.

IMG_4246x.jpg

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8 hours ago, BWM said:

I'd imagine CRT will be spending a lot of money repairing the arches damaged by unsuitable craft and those with ridiculous cabin shapes chopping lumps out of them over the next few years. 

They probably could do with adding some preventative measures/  strips for some bridges  even for standard sized boats 🙂60186FED-7731-4C4A-8229-B26BBB931039.jpeg.a155a84a799d17df33a7f794edf5bd84.jpeg

Edited by Stroudwater1
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