Bridging aid sought

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33563, 18 June 1974, Page 18

Bridging aid sought

The Christchurch City Council will seek a three - for - one subsidy for its $770,000 South Brighton Bridge and associated street works, one of four major bridge projects it has in hand. The purpose of the approach for an increased subsidy—at present the Roads Board subsidy is three-for-two—is to speed up the work on the South Brighton bridge, which is not due for completion under the present subsidy until 1979. Sir Robert Macfarlane, the chairman of the council’s works committee, said that of the four projects—the South Brighton bridge, the Durham Street river bridge (near the Bridge of Remembrance), the Durham Street railway overbridge, and the Montreal Street railway

overbridge—expenditure had already been incurred on the first three, and construction contracts were under way for the Durham Street railway bridge. The estimated cost of the four bridges is more than $3.5m, of which almost half a million dollars has already been spent. The remainder is programmed over the next i eight years. I Present planning calls for ■ the completion of the > Durham Street river bridge > by the end of 1976, If an

effort was made to speed up the South Brighton project, by putting it ahead of the Durham Street bridge, the available money would only advance the completion of the South Brighton bridge by one year (to 1968), while delaying the other by three years, said Sir Robert Macfarlane. “Should more rapid progress be required on these bridges, it would seem necessary to make substantially more money available,” he said.