THE Tallowwood Point Bridge, Promised Land Road, Gleniffer is now open to traffic thanks to the focussed efforts of Bellingen Shire Council’s Bridge Crew, who put in place an accelerated works program to ensure the removal and replacement of the old timber bridge was completed in time for the busy Christmas Holiday period.

The bridge, which is located approximately seven kilometres from the Glennifer Four-Way Intersection, was closed due the movement and failure of a bridge pile, with onsite structural assessments confirming that the bridge would need to be replaced.

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Council successfully recently received $16.2M funding from Transport for NSW under the Fixing Country Bridges funding scheme, and this funding, along with Council and other co-contributions will fast track the delivery of our Shire’s Bridge Renewal Program, which will remove and replace twenty-seven bridges across the Shire so our local community, farmers and businesses can all safely travel across our transport network.

Total cost for these replacements is $23M.

Subsequently, more than $499,000 in funds were immediately made available to commence works in July 2021 to remove and replace the bridge, which features a concrete sub-structure for resilience and a timber super-structure to retain the original aesthetics values of the old timber bridge.

The long standing 3-tonne load limit of the old bridge has also been substantially increased to accommodate full size semi-trailers and to meet the transport and logistical needs of our Shire’s local agriculture and farming industries.

This bridge is the first of the 27 structures identified for replacement under Fixing Country Bridges, so there’s a lot going on and with more than $18.53M of projects identified for delivery during this financial year’s Capital Works Program, Council staff are currently finalising a resourcing strategy to ensure we are in a strong position to continue delivering these priority projects throughout our Shire.

Future Bridge Renewal Projects that are also being managed through the design, tender and pre-construction phases, also include the $1.66M removal and replacement of Richardson’s Bridge, an old single lane, five-span timber bridge located on Darkwood Road and the $4M replacement of Kalang River Bridge (Hanleys) on Bowraville Road.