August 21, 2008

The Seaway International Bridge, built in 1962, is a vital transportation route across the St. Lawrence River.

Federal Bridge Corporation makes plans to replace Seaway International Bridge

TERRY TINKESS

correspondent

In Canada, a country with an abundance of water, bridges are just a part of life for most people. They travel over them to get to where they are going, never thinking about the structure that supports them. Never, that is, until the bridge approaches the end of its normal lifespan.

In the Cornwall area, bridges both big and small have been a popular topic of conversation lately. At one end of the spectrum, the enormous high-rise steel structure linking Cornwall with the Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne is due to be replaced.

At the other end, upstream in fact, a much smaller bridge providing access to a popular tourist area created havoc for local merchants when it was closed temporarily after showing the effects of 50 years of regular use.

The Seaway International Bridge, which crosses the north channel of the St. Lawrence River, opened on July 3, 1962. It is a high-level structure, 1,625 metres long and 8.2 metres wide. It handles over 120,000 commercial and 2,300,000 passenger transits annually, and is a vital transportation route for major industry in the region.

The Federal Bridge Corporation Limited (FBCL), which operates the bridge in joint venture with the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, plans to replace the existing structure with a low-level bridge and a number of associated corridor improvements.

The process will include the construction of a new low-level bridge, construction of a new canal bridge, the removal of the existing high-level bridge structure and the re-construction of approach roadways.

Bob Peters, Senior Development Officer with the City of Cornwall says the new bridge will affect Cornwall in a number of ways.

“It will have a significantly different footprint upon the city, freeing up land along Brookdale Avenue towards the water,” says Peters.

“The low-level bridge will significantly change that area of the city,” says Peters, “and provide more flexibility when it comes to redeveloping some of the lands, particularly the lands toward the west along Brookdale Avenue.”

It will also provide a better linkage to Cornwall Island. “As an island in an international waterway, it is a unique treasure,” says Peters. “The culture and the community of Akwesasne become more accessible. Accessibility becomes better both ways.”

Peters says many people will prefer crossing a low-level bridge, finding it less “intimidating” than the current structure.

“Visually it becomes less of a barrier. Perhaps not operationally, but the physical structure of the current bridge, the height of the bridge presents a visual barrier and a subconscious barrier.”

While he cannot provide a firm date for when construction could begin, Peters says that Treasury Board approval has been obtained and things are moving along.

West of Cornwall, in the village of Ingleside, campers and patrons of the Long Sault Parkway and the merchants who serve them were also dealing with question of how to deal with a bridge that was beginning to show its age.

The Long Sault Parkway was developed during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway and consists of a number of islands joined by bridges and a two-lane roadway that runs from Long Sault at the east end to Ingleside at the west end.

On the Friday before the Canada Day weekend, which ironically would have also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the bridge at the west end was closed to all traffic for safety reasons.

Inspection of the bridge revealed the problem to be not with the bridge itself, but with the concrete approach slabs, which hold the bridge in place through tension. Following further inspection and temporary repairs the bridge was reopened.

Patricia Macdonald, general manager, St. Lawrence Parks Commission, says more work is planned.

“We’ve done the temporary repairs, and we know that more repair work will be necessary for a couple of reasons,” says Macdonald.

Five bridges were built as a result of the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, three of which are the responsibility of the St. Lawrence Parks Commission. The other two are owned by local townships.

“Those bridges are really not up to today’s standard,” says Macdonald, “and they are grandfathered until you go in and start doing reconstruction on them. When you go in and refurbish them, you are required to bring them up to today’s code.

“In addition to that, we want to correct the problem over the long term and make a more permanent repair and so we’re currently assessing what needs to be done and our intention would be to prepare a construction plan. It’s going to be quite expensive, so we have to evaluate how we are going to pay for it, and an ideal world would result in our making our repairs by next April, May at the latest so that we would be in a position to know that we have a more permanent solution.”

Work has previously been done on the two bridges owned by the townships, while reconstructive work has also been completed on the bridge near the east gate of the Long Sault Parkway. It is the two remaining bridges that have received, and will continue to receive the bulk of the attention going forward.

Macdonald says the decision may yet be made to proactively reconstruct the bridges to avoid additional problems in the future.

“The question is, if you’re going in and fixing one bridge, is it better to go in and fix the other at the same time even though it is not currently exhibiting the same stress?” asks Macdonald. Cost, obviously will be a factor in the decision.

“It’s a considerable amount of money, and in our case we’re an agency of the provincial government and we operate on the basis of transfer payments and capital grants that we get. These are extremely expensive items. We’ve definitely brought them to the Ministry’s attention and we’re trying to work out a game plan that will work for all parties concerned and that will minimize any disruption to guests or businesses or anything else.”

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