If you’ve got any sentimental attachment to the old Keith Road Bridge, now’s the time to get a photo.
The District of North Vancouver will be shutting down Keith Road for the entire weekend so the 70-year-old truss bridge can be lifted out of its current position and sent for scrap.
Commuters may have noticed demolition teams installing an orange steel frame around the bridge this week. By Friday, they will have used jacks to lift the 360-tonne bridge up about 2.5 metres. From there, the old bridge will be slowly slid across a series of steel beams onto the new bridge and lowered onto a series of wheeled hydraulic dollies. Demolition crews will then roll the old bridge west and off the roadway where it will be cut apart.
During that time, east-west Keith Road traffic will be diverted down Mountain Highway and Brooksbank Avenue to Main Street.
“We’ve got the closure for the whole weekend to give us the time to do it properly,” said Tyler Thompson, project engineer. “It’s a slow operation, as you can imagine, with the size of the bridge. … The demolition method we’re using is to try to minimize the amount of work that’s happening over the creek itself because it’s an environmentally sensitive fish-bearing creek.”
As soon as the old bridge is gone, contractors can begin pile driving for the second half of the new bridge, which is scheduled to be open this fall with five lanes – two east, two west, plus a turn lane exclusively serving Mountain Highway south, separating local and highway traffic.
“The ultimate product that we’re gaining is the five lanes of traffic compared to the two we had before, leading to a better commute in the east-west connection in North Van, which will eventually tie into the Ministry of Transportation’s Mountain Highway interchange project to the west and future Ministry of Transportation projects to the east. It’s one piece of the puzzle in this area,” Thompson said.
And unlike the old bridge, which had only one narrow sidewalk, the new bridge features separated 3.2-metre bike lanes and sidewalks on both sides.
The new $12-million bridge is expected to last another 75 years.
The district will also replant the 150 trees cut down to make way for the project at a three-to-one ratio.
