Get ready. If you take Ridout St. downtown, you'll need to find a new route
Work to replace Victoria Bridge begins in the next few weeks and will shut down the crossing for a year
Within a few weeks, crews will shut down Ridout St. between Horton St. and the entrance to Thames Park to begin construction on removing and replacing Victoria Bridge with a more modern steel structure.
The $23-million project will take more than a year to complete and disrupt a major artery into downtown from London's south end.
"The bridge is just about 100 years old, so it's time," said Garfield Dales, the City of London's division manager of transportation, planning and design. "It needs some work." The bridge is rusting, and the concrete is beginning to crack, he said.
"Not only is it old, but it doesn't do a very good job of providing facilities for cyclists and for pedestrians, so the new bridge will be slightly wider," he said.
"There will be components that will be delivered to the site, and then they'll be put together and then lifted in place."
It's a complicated project which won't wrap until summer 2023; it will take down several trees, alter the entrance to the park and shut down the tennis courts. New tennis courts will eventually be installed.
"It's a reasonable amount of time for a project of this size and complexity," said Dales.
Temporary pedestrian bridge to be installed in interim
"I know that it's very old, and it needs replacing, and it's going to be down for over a year," said Connie Doan, who was out walking with a friend over Victoria Bridge this week.
Doan also drives over the bridge since she lives in Wortley Village and uses the route to get downtown, although she's not too worried about any detours she'll face. "I haven't given it too much thought because I'm semi-retired, so I'm not usually in a hurry to get places."
The good news? Although drivers will be out a north-south corridor to downtown, pedestrians and cyclists will still be able to cross the river at Thames Park over a new temporary pedestrian bridge that will begin somewhere in the tennis courts and span 75 metres to the north over the river.
The pedestrian bridge will cost between $200,000 and $300,000 of the project's total bill, said Dales. It will be removed once the new Victoria Bridge is in place.
Dales wasn't able to offer an exact start date but said crews have already been on-site to install netting under the bridge to deter birds from nesting before the bridge is removed. They've also been doing utility work and have started staging the area for their equipment.
Watch as London Morning host Rebecca Zandbergen describes some of the changes:
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