Highway #201 bridge demolished

The Highway #201 bridge in the Qu'Appelle Valley has now been completely demolished, as work gets underway to replace the worn-out bridge with a newer design.
The demolition began Monday, January 18, and the project appears to be pretty much on track. There was one minor setback in November, when work was slated to begin, as unusually warm temperatures prevented the water underneath the bridge from freezing into a thick enough layer of ice to prevent chunks of bridge from falling into the water during demolition.
"With the thick ice, they can just clean their debris up off the ice," said Allan Hegedus, Senior Bridge Project Engineer.
The bridge is expected to be completed by mid-March, and Hegedus fervently hopes that nothing interferes with their efforts to have everything done before the mercury climbs too high.
"We really don't want to be detouring traffic during the thaw," he said, as he fears that the grid roads currently being used as backup will be far less sound when the ice and snow melt, potentially causing further headaches for detouring drivers.
The current detours include highway 9 and 47 for heavy vehicles, and the grid road going east-west, south of Ochapowace, which goes west off of #201 and onto grid 605 north.
The bridge will be immediately useable upon construction, but will still provide a bit of a rough ride at first, as paving cannot be completed until the spring.
"But that'll be just a day job. It shouldn't take more than a day - two at the most - to pave the bridge."
In the meantime, Hegedus says he has seen far worse detours in his day, than the one provided for the #201.
"I drove it Monday, and it seemed okay. As far as grid roads go, it's a very well-maintained road."
For anyone who used the old bridge on a regular basis, the process may be inconvenient, but Hegedus stresses there was simply no way around it.
"It couldn't have been repaired. You could repair it so it looked good, but the structural capacity would have been really low. It needed to be done."
Aside from the obvious flaws in the bridge, Hegedus says that the new design will be much sounder than the previous arch bridge, which was constructed around the 1930's.
"It's up to the highway standard - so it's got the structural capacity."
He stated that farmers with cumbersome equipment will no longer have to worry about the arches blocking their loads.
The bridge project is expected to cost approximately $1 million.