Via City of London Twitter
The Victoria Bridge was originally constructed in 1926, and the time for its replacement has arrived. The new bridge will allow structural updates that will accommodate more bicycle and pedestrian traffic.
The city planned to have construction take place from March 2022 – July 2023 with the Ridout Street North closure set for March of 2022 according to the cities last Public Update Meeting. Ultimately, it was announced that the Ridout Street North closure from Thames Park to Horton Street East will begin on July 25th behind schedule.
Headlines were made earlier this summer when it was announced the bridge project was being delayed due to the discovery of endangered species, but it is unclear if the city could have avoided the delay.
The delay was initiated by the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in response to the cities project proposal which required adjustments. The DFO noted the city sent over a comprehensive plan for their department to look over.
According to Stephen Martens, a Regulatory Review Manager from the DFO, “the DFO looks at the proposed work, undertakings or activities, and determines if they are likely to result in a death of fish, or a harmful alterations, disruptions, or destruction of fish habitat.”
The DFO can only being their assessment after they received the proposal from the city.
“Once we get the project, an initial assessment is completed, and in this case it looks like an authorization under the fishery act would be required, or that the project would have a residual adverse impact to fish and fish habitat, so we notified the city of that and then our staff worked with them quite extensively on altering some aspects of their project to get it going forward, and make less of an impact to fish and fish habitat,” says Martens
London’s Ward 13 runs halfway across the Victoria Bridge Project.
Ward 13 councilor John Fyfe-Millar said “this is one of the first major bridge projects that this city has taken on in a long time, especially over the Thames [river], and you know I’d like to say that everything has a learning phases and everything has a learning period. I think we are learning through this process that there are some things that maybe we should have been more proactive on. That said I think as we move forward on some of these other [city] projects, this allows us to adapt our checklist that we are looking at and recognize there is some tweaking we have to do.”
With the bridge project getting underway behind schedule Councilor Fyfe-Millar noted it will be difficult to still meet the proposed completion deadline. The DFO has sent over the permits and so the project is back underway which is confirmed by the Ridout closure.
Ridout Street from Thames Park to Horton St will be closed to all traffic from July 25, 2022 until the spring of 2023.
LTC Routes 4 and 15 will be detoured because of constructions.
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