Restoring the North Bourke Bridge still a priority
Bourke Shire Council will undertake a business case to establish actual costs for restoring the North Bourke Bridge.
It has now been five years since council closed the old North Bourke Bridge to pedestrians, citing safety reasons, in 2018.
“It’s been a priority of council to restore the North Bourke Bridge, not only because of its history, but because when the new bridge was built in North Bourke, there’s no pedestrian access,” Bourke Shire Council General Manager, Leonie Brown said.
“Pedestrian access to North Bourke is pathways that lead to the old North Bourke Bridge which you can’t cross because it’s too dangerous.”
Mrs Brown also said that in the case of an incident happening and closing the new bridge, services based at North Bourke would need to travel to Louth or Brewarrina – a 200-kilometre round trip to get from Bourke back to North Bourke.
“When the old bridge closed, the Roads and Transport Authority handed the bridge over to council and of course council just doesn’t have the funds to keep the maintenance up,” Mrs Brown said.
“We are proposing to do a business case, and we will develop that business case into factual information to know what the actual costs are and then we’ll go out and look for funding to undertake that.” […]
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