A road less travelled

If you knew what I was about to tell you, and you knew what it meant, you’d be sitting down in preparation for the shock. The bridge at J7 of the M56 is being mended.

Doesn’t sound like much does it? But this bridge has been a designated “weak bridge” for the whole of living memory, or so it seems. In fact I’ll have to do some Internet research on it(*), because I simply can’t remember when it was first covered in cones, or subject to some sort of weight restriction. Let me put it this way, I’ve been assigned to my current “project” since November 2001 and the bridge has certainly been restricted to a single lane for the whole of that time. Prior to that in reverse chronological order it has been variously coned off to close the left-hand lane; coned off to close the right-hand lane; painted with cross-hatching to ensure traffic only travelled a single track along the centre of the bridge; had warning signs in place; and at various times for varying lengths of time it’s been closed altogether while the engineers do structural tests, measuring and monitoring.

I reckon it must be at least ten years.

When I drove to Solihull last Friday, men were hard at work and had dug up half the width of the bridge down to the main framework. At last! What the flippin’ ’eck has taken so long?

(*)Hmph! Nothing interesting at all apart from some Lymm residents moaning in 2005. It's been going on a lot longer than that.