City to begin tearing down flood-damaged bridges

CALGARY- Work is about to get underway, to tear down three flood-damaged pedestrian bridges in southwest Calgary.

The bridges along Elbow Drive, Sifton Boulevard and Sandy Beach were destroyed during the June flood, and were all but swept away by large trees and debris.

The city plans to start taking them down, but there are no immediate plans to rebuild—or restore them to their original glory.

“Some of those bridges were three quarters of a century old,” said Sean Somers from the City of Calgary. “The reality is that there are new standards. We need to be able to obviously accommodate pedestrians—that’s primarily who’s using them—but we’d like them to be wheelchair accessible, we’d like them to be cycling accessible.

“If we were to reconstruct exactly what was there before, none of that would be possible.”

He adds that the city wants to get input from surrounding communities about what the new bridges should look like, and has yet to start on the design process.

It’s expected to be at least a year, until all three are finished.