Covered bridge in St. Martins, N.B. under repair

Another of New Brunswick’s covered bridges is under repair, the second in as many weeks.

The “Vaughan Creek Bridge” in St. Martins leads to the Fundy Trail Parkway, a major tourist destination in the province. A weight restriction of 18 tonnes was placed on the span this morning.

“This would be the last covered bridge in our inventory to actually have no weight restriction,” said New Brunswick Transportation Minister Bill Fraser.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "This would be the last covered bridge in our inventory to actually have no weight restriction," said New Brunswick Transportation Minister Bill Fraser.

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The covered bridge isn’t being shut down, the minister notes and keeping it in operation is something village officials would like to see well into the future if possible.

“We hope down the road when we look at putting perhaps in two lane traffic in the area we could still keep the heritage and some kind of structure to maintain the Vaughan Creek Bridge,” said St. Martins Mayor Bette Ann Chatterton.

“If it can be maintained that’s cost effective and meets the requirements for future transportation it would be great,” added St. Martins Chamber of Commerce president Steve McPhee. “We won’t know that until further studies are done.”

Tourism is a major industry in St. Martins and will be a very busy area especially during peak cruise ship time in the fall.

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“Our goal is to have something in place with the modular bridge before then,” Fraser said. “Either that or to have the weight restriction removed by reinforcing this bridge.But given the age of the structure and given the report that we had done on the structure, we’ll continually monitor and we’ll have to make adjustments as necessary.”

The cost associated with repairing the Vaughan Creek Bridge is not yet known.