Preston tram bridge opening set for Spring

When it comes to building a 125-metre bridge across a fast-flowing river, some elements of the task are bound to prove tougher than others.

As the team working to replace Preston’s Old Tram Bridge has discovered, however, they are not necessarily the ones you might imagine.

Hoisting its four sections into place so that they fit together seamlessly, using one of the biggest cranes in the country?  Completed without a hitch.

Drilling deep into the river bed to install the piers, while abiding by ecological rules to protect the salmon that live in the water?  Job done.

Dealing with Preston’s weather patterns?  A little more problematic.

Any of the slight hold-ups encountered during the near two-year-long project can seemingly be attributed not to the scale of the engineering challenge, but the city’s propensity for wind and rain.

According to Antony Mulligan, contracts manager for Eric Wright Civil Engineering – the Bamber Bridge-based firm leading the work – it is the latter that has been the cause of a short delay to the final stages of the £8.2m scheme.

“Since Christmas, we’ve been completing the painting on some of the equipment under the bridge and around the pier structures.   There were some touch-up requirements and, typically, they require three or four coats.

“That has admittedly taken longer than we thought, due to the lovely British northern weather.   Getting a suitable window to do [the work] hasn’t been easy in the first quarter of the year,” Antony explained.

When work began back in the summer of 2024 to re-establish the more 220-year-old cross-river connection between Preston and Penwortham, it was estimated that the new bridge could be open around the turn of this year – but that was later revised to spring.

Currently, there is still no confirmed opening date, although Antony said one was likely to be announced by Preston City Council within “the next couple of weeks”.   The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands the second half of May is a likely timeframe if the remaining jobs run to schedule.

The most significant of those is the resurfacing of the Old Tram Road, which runs for a mile from The Cawsey – on the South Ribble side of the bridge – through to the river.   The route has been used by construction traffic during the course of the project – and the new surface is due to be laid this month.

On the opposite bank of the Ribble, in Avenham Park, Antony said that the necessary guard rails and handrails are yet to arrive on site, but are expected in the coming week.

“They will then start to be installed – and the north side will come together quite quickly after that,” he added.

The bridge’s lighting is already in place and is currently already being tested out. It will be timed to come on with the lights in the park.

The remainder of those finishing touches to be made over the next month or so will mark the end of a scheme that will re-establish the Old Tram Bridge link, which was first created in 1804. It has had several iterations since – the latest of which was condemned and closed in February 2019 amid fears it could collapse without warning.

Antony said the ease with which that structure was demolished across a fortnight in August 2024 – half the time thought likely – “validated” the decision taken by Lancashire County Council, as the highways authority, to shut the bridge off as soon as its stability was called into question seven years ago.

The fact that the weather has been the only real source of delay during construction and installation of its replacement should not detract from the complexity of delivering the scheme.

For Antony, the biggest combined challenge has been working in a tidal river – and reaching the pier furthest from the southern bank where the works compound has been based.   That scenario has required some innovative solutions – and even then, the Preston weather has sometimes still made its presence felt.

“We have had to mobilise various different means of access, including pontoons that didn’t always stand the test of time.   High rainfall coupled with high tides [meant] they weren’t always available for use – and were occasionally seen a bit further off downstream.

“We also used man-riding baskets hooked up to the crane – and we had two boats, at times, to get the guys out there to enable the critical work to be completed.

“So that certainly wasn’t straightforward, it was something different – we don’t do that kind of work every week and it was challenging,” Anthony recalls.

Asked about the most worrying moments of the engineering endeavour, he said there was only one period that risked giving him “sleepless nights” – the actual installation of the 140 tonnes of new bridge and the corresponding hope that the giant pieces of the puzzle fitted together.

“When there are four sections that have to marry up millimetre-perfectly to all the adjoining substructures and the other sections the bridge, that is always going to be a testing time for everyone involved.

“But I think everyone could see how smoothly it went once we got the weather window to undertake the activities.”

There would have been plenty of witnesses to any embarrassing mishaps in that process, which was completed over several days in late November and early December last year.   The sight of the delicate operation being carried out by a 75-metre-high crane – with a jib length of 114 metres – was enough to attract a small crowd to the banks of the Ribble.

“That just shows how much interest there is in the project – and not just locally, because people had travelled [from] various parts of the county and even neighbouring counties to come and see it,” Antony said.

The bridge’s designer – the aptly-named John Bridge – has been similarly struck by the public’s fascination with the structure and its reinstatement.

“I first did a design almost as a bit of an April Fool’s idea [in 2020] – it was a ‘garden bridge’, but [the reaction showed] the passion that people had for wanting a bridge back there.   In many ways, it’s a community bridge, as well as a physical one,” John said.

He told the LDRS his company, Studio John Bridge, has remained closely involved as the eventual design it produced has taken shape.

“From choosing the colour of the steel to the texture of the concrete to the material of the planks – we’ve been a big part of it. And Eric Wright Group have just done a fantastic job,” John said.

The real thrill for him, however, will come when the bridge is finally in use – when he hopes its status as a bridleway will be fully taken advantage of.

“I can’t wait for everyone to enjoy it – and I want to see people, bicycles and a horse going across it on the day it opens,” he laughed.

Given the technical and logistical feat that has been pulled off to get to this point, arranging an equine presence at the ribbon-cutting ceremony is surely well within the realms of the possible.