Motorists will have to wait at least another year and a half to travel across the River Derwent on the new Bridgewater Bridge, with the State Government revealing it now won’t be open until 2025.
The $786 million project was initially slated to open with a 60km/h speed limit for one lane of traffic in each direction by the end of 2024.
But Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Michael Ferguson said this will no longer be the case.
“I am advised by project management that they can complete the job more efficiently, with less risk to worker safety and open to all four lanes of traffic at 80kph within the overall due date,” Ferguson said.
“Anyone who has driven through the area recently would have seen the hive of activity taking place across the project site.”
“The original construction schedule remains on time to be completed in mid-2025.”
Labor criticised the delays and said they “shouldn’t surprise too many people given this government’s appalling track record of delivering infrastructure projects”.
“Michael Ferguson and Jeremy Rockliff have both said that cars will drive on the bridge by 2024, but in the last weeks before Christmas they reveal they will no longer meet their own deadline.”
Next week, major traffic changes will take place in Granton, with the installation of a temporary roundabout on the Brooker Highway to redirect traffic onto the new Lyell Highway alignment.
A section of Black Snake Road will be closed and Main Road traffic will be directed along George Street for approximately three months.
In early 2024, northbound traffic on the Midland Highway in Bridgewater will be diverted along Old Main Road.
As of Friday, 14 of the 42 bridge piers had been poured, over 190,000 cubic metres of earth had been moved and 97 out of the 1,082 segments needed for the bridge had been made at the nearby purpose-built pre-cast concrete production facility.
