[Updated] $12m Golden Grove Road bridge opened

After two years and four months, two-way traffic has been restored on Golden Grove Road, Arouca, near the prisons. The Bailey bridge has been removed and the traffic light is awaiting removal.

Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan, MP for Arouca/Maloney Camille Robinson-Regis and contractor Junior Sammy attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the completion of work on Friday.

The bridge collapsed in October 2020, after heavy rain, and repairs began in August 2021.

The new bridge cost approximately $12.2 million to construct, Sinanan said. He added the 2020 collapse was caused by the age of the infrastructure.

“We had to put emergency plans in place, so we constructed the Bailey bridge because this road is a major thoroughfare from the main road to the highway, to get to the airport, and it’s a road used by thousands of people on a daily basis.”

“We don’t just build a bridge like that. We have to look at the volume of water, not only the flow now, but the anticipated flow. We got proper designs. We are happy with the outcome.

“What we have now is a bridge that has 100 per cent more capacity than the previous bridge. The previous bridge, in one instance, was 60 years old and about 30 years ago, a temporary structure was placed on top of that. So what we have now is a brand-new bridge built to cater for the flow of water going into the future.”

The ministry has 92 bridges on its programme, Sinanan said, and 42 have already been completed. Currently, there are 14 locations which require repairs where construction is about to begin or is under way.

“The drive is to remove all the wooden bridges in the country and to look at the aged bridges which see infrastructural challenges. By the end of this financial year, we hope to do about 60 of those.”

Asked about the bridge’s impact on her constituency, Robinson-Regis said, “I am thankful that this has become a reality. Because of the covid (pandemic) it took a little while after they put up the temporary bridge for the traffic to continue flowing.

“When they started the work it continued without let, and so we are seeing the results of very good work by my colleague and his team, and now it’s a much bigger bridge than we had before, so the traffic flow will be even easier.”

Robinson-Regis, who is also Minister of Housing and Urban Development, said the water which flowed beneath the collapsed bridge “was more than the bridge at the time, because of its age, could have accepted, so we knew this bridge was always under threat. The bridge was an old bridge. The foundation was mainly rubble.

“But now we expect this bridge to last over 100 years.”

Parts of the Arouca/Maloney constituency have flooded recently, and she believes that the Golden Grove bridge, and its widened watercourse will mitigate its effects.

Explaining why the bridge took two years and four months, the ministers agreed the construction of the new bridge was hindered by the heavy traffic on Golden Grove Road throughout the day.

“Working in an area like this has many challenges, so I just want to thank the team at Junior Sammy who worked on an active work site. This is not an area that would have been closed off to traffic, and people don’t often understand the challenges it poses for contractors.”