With the release of its Environmental Assessment Report on the subject last week, Simcoe County has asserted its position that the best solution for the ailing Collingwood Street Bridge is to remove and replace it. Local resident Barry Burton and the committee he has formed in response to the County’s plans, however, are equally convinced that the bridge should be saved and rehabilitated. And despite the fact that the fight is reaching its eleventh hour, Burton’s group has no intention of backing down.
Last Sunday, the committee held a strategy meeting in Burton’s living room. Those sitting in just the right position could almost catch a glimpse of the 99-year-old one-lane bridge through a window. Gathered to discuss a response to the EA report were Burton; Clearview Councillor Thom Paterson; Brentwood resident Chris Vanderkruys, whose great-grandfather built the bridge; Ingrid Schilling, who wrote a letter to the Echo on the subject a few weeks ago; and three individuals who have spent their careers in and around steel bridge construction: John Hillier, John Boote and Jack Mesley.
Boote, a structural engineer who oversaw the construction of the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia – a massive steel truss structure – presented a costing estimate to the County last year, which said that the Collingwood Street Bridge could be rehabilitated and equipped with a new steel deck and one sidewalk positioned on the outside of the superstructure for approximately $900,000. The work would include the removal of a hump in the road on the north side of the bridge which causes the bridge’s approach angle to be unsafe by today’s standard. Once restored in this fashion, Boote said the bridge would have a 100-year lifespan, with the steel needing a recoat every 25 years.
With that in mind, the committee was surprised to see the opinion of AECOM, the engineering firm that authored the EA, printed in the report. In the section on cost estimates and life cycles, the report states a rehabilitation cost of $971,000 versus a replacement cost of $1,470,000 (the $1.75 million previously reported includes engineering fees). But 30 years out, it states that the rehabbed bridge will have to be replaced completely at a cost of $1,770,000, while the new bridge would only incur $50,000 in maintenance costs.
“I don’t know where they’re getting that idea,” Boote told the group. “If we do the work we’ve proposed, we’re putting 100 years back into the bridge.”
The EA’s cost and lifestyle section compares the costs of both options over a 75-year period. Converted into today’s dollars (making the supposed $1.7 million replacement cost for the rehabbed bridge in 30 years more like $729,000), and taking into account the fact that the new bridge wouldn’t have to be replaced, the final tally comes to $1.715 million for the “rehabilitate now” option and $1.69 million for the “replace now” option. Subtract from those numbers the estimated value of the bridges in the state they’ll be 75 years from now, and the numbers get a little closer – $1.54 million for the “rehab now” option and $1.58 million for the “replace now” option. Essentially, the financial argument is a wash, according to the EA.
But again, Burton’s group disagrees, and its members claim they have the bona fide expertise and knowledge to know, for sure, that a rehabilitated bridge using the process described in Boote’s cost estimate will not need replacing for 100 years. “They’re ignoring us for political reasons,” said Burton, convinced that County politicians and staff are so “hell-bent” to replace the bridge that they’re not listening to his group of residents.
The report also does not include the elimination of the hump on the north side of the bridge in the cost estimate for rehabilitation; it continues to note the existing unsafe geometry of the road as a deficiency should the bridge be restored. Boote, however, maintains the problem could be dealt with and has included it in his cost estimate.
It’s Burton’s group’s opinion that the difference in costs between plans is their biggest avenue to gaining further support from residents. The County maintains that half the $1.75 million cost of replacing the bridge would be eligible to come from Development Charges, and should they require $900,000 instead to rehabilitate the existing structure, all of that money would have to come from general taxation. But to Burton, that’s like “saying the money has to come from the Chequing account rather than the Savings account.” It’s a little more complicated than that, but Paterson gave his opinion at Sunday’s meeting that the argument is essentially an accounting exercise. Either way, a decision on the bridge frees up funding from the other source for something else.
Perhaps the most interesting section of the EA report is the Cultural Heritage Evaluation and Heritage Impact Assessment, which is a revised version of what was included in the original EA report on the bridge, submitted in 2010. That report was the subject of a “bump-up” request by Burton, and while the MOE decided not to upgrade the EA from a Schedule “B” to a Schedule “C,” it did instruct the County to redo the report in greater detail. As part of those instructions, the Ministry of Tourism and Culture commented on the original Heritage Impact Assessment, stating that the two rubrics used to judge whether the Collingwood Street Bridge was a “Heritage Bridge” were both irrelevant, as one was designed only for Provincially owned bridges and the other was associated with a heritage program that no longer exists. Instead, the County’s heritage consultants were instructed to assess the bridge using the current Criteria for Determining Cultural Heritage Value or Interest.
The results are much more encouraging to Burton and his crew. While the bridge failed the two rubrics last time, this time the report concludes that the bridge meets the criterion for rarity and, as a gateway feature on the edge of an urban settlement, it meets the criterion as a landmark feature. The fact that Burton presented a petition to save the bridge that included 182 names proved that a third criterion was also met: the bridge is significant to its community.
On this basis, the heritage study (which is just one element of the whole EA) concludes that the bridge is eligible for heritage protection, and that its preferred solution is to leave it where it is. However, it also notes its many deficiencies – its one-lane width, corrosion on its underlying trusses, the bad approach angle, its lack of proper barricades and its low load limit – and says that if the current amount of traffic is to continue using Collingwood Street, then other options would be sufficient. The options include twinning the bridge or moving it somewhere else so it could be used as a pedestrian bridge. If it must be destroyed, the study asks at least that a plaque be placed on the new bridge, recording what had been there before.
Boote’s proposal claims it would fix all of those issues except for the width of the bridge – with a new steel deck, the load limit could be returned to its original level, he said. As for the fact that the bridge is one lane, Burton’s argument is that there are only 40 residents on its south side, and that all are accessible by an alternate route. “If ever there was a place to retain a historical one-lane bridge, this is it,” he said.
All of this said, the final recommendation of the EA maintains that the preferred solution for the County is to replace the existing Collingwood Street Bridge with a two-lane concrete span. Paying lip service to the new heritage report, it adds that “the County should also consider the possibility of relocating the existing bridge structure or mounting the existing main bridge trusses to the new bridge.”
“That would be just wrong,” said Jack Mesley of the latter suggestion at Sunday’s meeting. Boote and Hillier, bridge purists both, were quick to agree.
The County is adamant that the EA is the last word on the bridge, and that the replacement plan will proceed to the design phase this summer. The report is under a 30-day review period until March 5, however, and Burton is talking about requesting another “bump-up.” Before that, however, the committee is hoping to take another measure of its community support. On Saturday, February 18, at 11 am at the Station on the Green, the committee will host a public meeting, during which a presentation will be made detailing the contrasts between its plan and the County’s report.
The County is also planning a Public Information Centre in Creemore, from 4 to 7 pm on Tuesday, February 21 at the Creemore Arena. The meeting is not mandated, and any information gathered will not result in a staff report to County Council. It is intended as a chance for County staff to explain its rationale.
The full EA report can be viewed here.
Note: the above picture is a mock up of what the rehabilitated bridge could look like, provided to us by Barry Burton’s committee.