After years of escalating costs and delays for a replacement to the Johnson Street Bridge, Victoria’s city council is putting their collective foot down.
“We’ve been asked more time, more money. More time, more money. We’re saying no more time, and no more money, until we fix the schedule on this project,” says Mayor Lisa Helps.
City council has voted to withhold an additional $2.253 million requested by PCL, which is building the bridge, until they’re given an update on the quality of the products and have a chance to ask some questions.
“Council and the public need confidence that when this structure shows up in our harbour, it’s going to go up and down, it’s not going to crack, and it’s going to last the 75 years that we’ve paid for. That’s what we’re looking for,” said Helps.
It’s the latest twist in a long-running saga over the bridge, which was approved by Victoria voters in a 2010 referendum. In the years since, the estimated cost of the project has ballooned from $63 million to over $100 million.
“There’s hundreds of lift bridges in North America. The council of the day voted do to an untested, one of a kind design, and we’re now seeing the financial implications of that decision,” argues Ben Isitt, a city councillor.
The bridge was also originally expected to be opened by 2015, but the new date is January 2018. Project managers have said the fabrication of steelwork in China has been riddled with problems, and 75 cracked welds have been detected.
“One of the big steel members won’t fit into the fabrication…we’re going to have to drill holes into the structure, to put cameras in the structure, to see where those bars are,” says Jonathan Huggett, who took over as permanent project director last year.
Helps and city council have expressed confidence that, with greater oversight, the project won’t face any more serious overruns. But Ross Crockford, who investigated the proposal for years at johnsonstreetbridge.org, says it’s all too little, too late.
“I don’t think they’re asking the right questions. They never asked at the outset whether this design was unusual and whether there were risks associated with that.”
– With files from Kylie Stanton