Below is an email from a Council engineer regarding Yandina’s heritage bridges.
Hello Marie,
Thankyou for your enquiry.
I look after the renewal of transport structures to ensure they are safe, fit for purpose and ultimately meet their design life through timely renewals of components.
For some years now these bridges have been identified as being in extremely poor and unsafe condition. The problem we faced was that they were heritage listed, but following consultation with our Legal Team it has been established that we may now remove them. We are in the early stages of developing these projects. My first step is to get an estimate of cost for their removal. Once I have the dollar figures, the projects will be created and handed to our Project Delivery team, they will liaise with community groups to ensure they are included in the decision making process.
Some Background
Currently both structures are in a very poor condition and have become too unsafe to maintain. They now present the very real risk of injury/death should they collapse.
Ninderry Road Bridge (Old Rattley) poses the greatest risk, as it is more easily accessed by the public (fishing and kayaking). Additionally, if it were to be washed away, potentially it could cause damage to other bridge structures downstream.
As you can see there is very little structural timber remaining.
Yandina Rail Bridge poses less risk as it is located within the TMR rail corridor. Risk of injury/death still exists to the public(adventurous children or trespassers), Kayakers and Council and QR Asset inspectors.
In answer to your questions below, the demolition contract has not gone out to public tender and the extent of the works are currently unknown at this point.
Once I have an idea of the cost, I will create the projects, and the direction we take will be decided by the Project Manager in consultation with the local community.
However, my recommendations will be as follow.
Ninderry Road bridge is to be removed in its entirety, perhaps creating an artwork/sculpture or something else in the park from some salvaged timbers, perhaps by a local community group, Mens’ Shed or similar.
Yandina Rail Bridge to have all timber components removed on both sides of the river, plus the steel truss which spans the river. It would be nice aesthetically and historically to leave the cast iron columns untouched, as they are the only elements that remain from the original structure as the steel truss section is modern.
Basically, from Council’s perspective, both structures have reached their End of Life…in fact this occurred many years ago.
Unfortunately, repair is no longer an option and now the cost of replacement would be in the order of $2m for the Ninderry Road Bridge and substantially more for the Rail Bridge. With the benefit to the public being relatively low, the spending cannot be justified from the Transportation Renewals’ budget.
I’m happy to discuss over the phone or meet up on site.
