Friday, October 08, 2010

Delcan made a $8.6 million estimate to fix the Johnson Street Bridge in 2008

According to Focus, two years ago the engineering firm Delcan made an estimate that the bridge could be refurbished for $8.6 million.  Read about it here.

I am more than a little stunned to see this and I have wonder what City Hall is thinking when they were offered an option that dramatically cheaper?

If one assumes that the costs are two to three times higher for a host of reasons, it would seem that even in a worst case project over run refurbishment is possible for a lot less than a new bridge.

The $8.6 million number seems much more in line with the costs of other bridge refurbishments of the same sort of bridge and also seems in the right order of magnitude when compared to the Lion's Gate Bridge Project.

I still think the bridge is ugly, I just do not think it is ugly enough to warrant spending $80 million or so dollars to replace it.

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