Motorists driving over the Bayfield River Bridge on highway 21 will notice a significant change this week. They'll be driving on the new bridge, instead of the temporary bridge they've been using for the past two years.
Replacing the old bridge involved constructing a new temporary bridge beside the old one, then tearing down the old one and building a new one, with fantastic white arches and then tearing down the temporary bridge. Traffic started moving On April 6th on the new bridge and Bayfield Ward councillor Bill Whetstone says, for once, the weather co-operated and helped with some of the issues and delays on the bridge and crews were able to get ahead of the game and get the two lanes open a little sooner than expected. Whetstone says they may still, at some point in the construction, take it down to one lane periodically, to do further work.
Whetstone says that further work will involve removing the temporary bridge and constructing the sidewalk beside the new bridge. But, he says, the intention is to have all of that done by the end of August and from that point on, there should be no new construction happening. Whetstone says there still could be some cleaning up for a while.