THERE'S been talk about a new river crossing in Bathurst for years.
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Much further down the mighty Macquarie, however, a new $220 million bridge over the watercourse is starting to take shape.
Major work got started in March on the new Dubbo bridge, which is part of an upgrade of the Newell Highway through that city, and the NSW Government reported this week that the next major milestone was underway.
That milestone was the placement of the first of more than 100 60-tonne girders, each spanning almost 34 metres, between the vertical pillars for the bridge.
Transport for NSW regional director west Alistair Lunn said the girders were being placed using a 60-metre crane.
"With many of the vertical pillars now in place, 123 girders will form the horizontal support for the structure," he said.
"The girders have been stockpiled onsite, and will be lifted into place between two headstocks, creating the 14-metre width of the new bridge deck.
"The installation process will continue well into 2024, and once they've all been placed, concrete can then be poured on top followed by asphalt to complete the bridge deck."
Build a bridge (and get over it)
- The Macquarie is formed just outside Bathurst when the Fish and Campbells rivers meet.
- The low level bridge over the river on Hereford Street at Bathurst closes regularly due to flooding. Unusually, the Great Western Highway was cut in November last year by an enormous Macquarie flood.
- The river under the bridge at Eglinton was reduced to waterholes at the height of the last drought.
- A new bridge over the river at Dixons Long Point, between Orange and Mudgee, has been talked about for years, but is looking unlikely to go ahead any time soon.
- The bridge over the Macquarie at Wellington collapsed in January 1989 when an earthmoving excavator snagged a truss.
The new bridge at Dubbo is being built north of the city's CBD and will form part of a re-routed Newell Highway.
The government says work over the next three months will include river piling, land piling on the western side of the Macquarie River, and progressing with pile caps, columns, headstocks and girder placement on the eastern side.
The completed bridge - jointly funded by the state and federal governments - will be 660 metres long.
The project is not without controversy.
Dubbo's Daily Liberal has reported in the past that a Dubbo Regional Council survey of residents showed a majority of respondents did not want the new bridge.
The Liberal has also previously reported that the bridge has a poor benefit-cost ratio.
And in Bathurst
BACK in mid-2021, Bathurst Regional councillor Warren Aubin said there were several routes under investigation for a new river crossing for the city.
"There's a few mud maps being drawn. One of them comes straight off Laffing Waters Lane there, and that's the sort of thing I like to see happening, because that's where the growth is out there," Cr Aubin said.
"Where it hooks up into town, that's the next thing. Does it go up Rankin Street, up Stewart Street, up Peel Street, who knows? That all depends on land acquisitions or where we can rightly put the road through."
