Roads and Maritime Services has awarded GHD with the contract to replace Barrington Bridge near Gloucester in mid north New South Wales.
GHD will carry out the concept design, environmental assessment, geotechnical investigation, final design and develop documents for the proposed new bridge.
The New South Wales Government will provide $700,000 funding in 2016/17 to plan the project which will improve safety and reliability of the bridge across the Barrington River.
Built in 1920, Barrington Bridge was identified for replacement in the 2012 Roads and Maritime Timber Truss Bridge Conservation Strategy.
The proposal involves replacing the existing timber bridge with a structure on an improved alignment to reduce long term maintenance costs and improve road freight productivity while meeting the changing traffic needs of the community in Barrington and surrounding areas.
Work will include building a new low maintenance bridge complete with a pedestrian footpath on the northern side and then removing the existing Allan timber truss bridge once the new bridge is in operation.
The exact location and alignment of the bridge and approaches will be finalised in consideration of the community and stakeholder feedback received in February 2016.
The current proposed alignment has been developed to improve travel speeds on Thunderbolts Way and keep the existing bridge open to traffic while the new bridge is being built.
This would eliminate the need for vehicles to detour around Thunderbolts Way, which is an important freight link between the Mid North Coast and the New England Tablelands serving the tourism, livestock and timber industries.
