Florenceville-Bristol bridge won't fully reopen until 2025: province

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/Traffic crossing the Saint John River in Florenceville-Bristol will be reduced to one lane until 2025, as the province continues to address repair work on the aging Route 130 bridge.

The refurbishment project on the main bridge has been going on since 2018 and was originally slated to be completed this month.

“The necessary repairs will add an additional year to the original completion date of November 2024,” Tyler McLean, a communication officer with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, said in an email. “The bridge will continue to be reduced to a single lane of traffic until all support brackets have been installed. The expected completion date is the end of 2025.”

McLean wrote it was discovered during an evaluation of the bridge this summer that additional repairs would be required on the bridge deck.

“The repair work involves installing support brackets,” he wrote. “A wider single lane will be reinstated down the middle of the bridge during the winter months.”

During the previous construction phases of the bridge, traffic was reduced to one lane for the spring/summer construction period, but restored to two lanes of traffic throughout the winter months.

Richard Ames, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, informed the district of Carleton North council the structural supports for the bridge overhangs “were in worse condition than initially anticipated.”

In a letter read during Tuesday’s district of Carleton North council meeting, Ames assured the council the “middle span of the bridge remains secure” and commiserated with the “inconvenience” the additional construction was going to cause.

“Our team is dedicated to completing the project in a timely manner, while ensuring the highest standards of safety and quality,” he wrote.

The bridge, part of the former Trans-Canada Highway, was built in 1965. Repairs on the structure began in 2018, with crews replacing the deck, barriers and railings, as well as upgrading the bridge approaches and refurbishing the bridge piers.

In April, the province said the project, which was done in four stages, would extend the structure’s life by an additional 30 years.

The current construction is the final phase of the project and will include deck rehabilitation of the south approach and main span.

The town’s only other bridge, a 100-year-old covered bridge on Main Street, was closed in 2020 due to structural issues.

The nearest bridge otherwise is in Perth-Andover or Hartland.