The new Bridgewater Bridge will be built high enough to allow large vessels to travel beyond the crossing into the Derwent Valley for the first time in over 170 years, engineers say.
The change will open up opportunities for future marine development upstream on the Derwent River, with Hobart shipbuilder INCAT last week announcing their plans to build a new electric vessel construction facility at Boyer.
Bridgewater Bridge Project Director Ben Maloney says the height of the new $786 million bridge is in line with that of the nearby Bowen Bridge
“Vessels capable of going underneath the existing Bowen Bridge will be able to get under ours,” he told Local Radio.
The River Derwent has been bridged at Bridgewater since 1849, with the current bridge built in the 1940s.
The existing Bridgewater Bridge will be demolished to open up the navigation channel, however the heritage causeway will remain in place.
“The actual causeway was built back in the 1830s by convict labour at the time,” Maloney said.
“The causeway has been there for so long that to remove it, you’d actually create more environmental harm than you’d potentially improve.”
He says they will be “retaining elements of the existing bridge to acknowledge its history”, developing a heritage strategy to recognise the cultural significance of the crossing and surrounding areas.
Maloney says traffic will be moved onto the new bridge as soon as possible after its completion, with demolition of the old bridge to begin shortly after.
“We’re on target to complete the project in the middle of next year,” he said.
“We’re looking to get traffic onto the new bridge sometime before that and then commence demolition of the existing bridge either at the end of next year or beginning of the following year.”
Maloney said his team also plan to reconstruct a boat ramp and jetty next to the bridge for the local community, after the existing facilities were demolished to make way for construction of the new bridge last year.
