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Opposition leaders say it’s time for the Nova Scotia government to provide details about the plan for the A. Murray MacKay Bridge in light of a recent tender for work related to the aging span.
For years there has been talk about the need to replace the bridge. A tender posted last week, however, to “assess, develop, and compare feasible preservation and rehabilitation alternatives” for the bridge’s approach span concrete deck system is cause for concern, said NDP Leader Claudia Chender.
“I think this should set off alarm bells,” she said.
“I think we’re seeing the ramifications of this government’s short-term partisan decision-making.”
What the tender wants
According to the tender, the work includes a detailed condition assessment and development of medium-term (approximately 20 years) preservation strategies and identification of long-term (approximately 75 years) rehabilitation options, with the goal of safely extending the service life of the approach span concrete deck to at least 2045.
“The work needs to be compatible with future bridge rehabilitation or replacement plans,” the document says.
During the last session of the Nova Scotia Legislature, the government passed legislation to absorb the Crown corporation responsible for the MacKay and Angus L. Macdonald bridges, which link downtown Halifax and Dartmouth.
That means the call for what comes next for the MacKay, a bridge recognized to be nearing the end of its service life, falls to the provincial government.
Public Works Minister Fred Tilley was not made available for an interview.
‘Standard engineering practice’ to look at long term
A statement from his department said options for harbour crossings are still being explored as part of the government’s regional transportation plan.
“This includes the bridges, as well as fast ferries and the road network. This evaluation, and eventual implementation, is a multi-year process. As it progresses, the components of the MacKay Bridge still need to be evaluated and maintained to ensure safety.”
The statement goes on to say that the tender is part of the overall maintenance plan for the MacKay and that it’s “standard engineering practice to do this kind of evaluation for the medium and long term.”
A 2018 feasibility study looked at nine options to extend the life of the bridge or replace it, ultimately offering a non-binding recommendation of a new bridge with six traffic lanes and two active transportation lanes. A subsequent study looked at what might go into refurbishing the bridge, however those results have yet to be made public.
The tender notes that the bridge will continue to require ongoing maintenance and rehabilitation planned in the years leading up to 2040, the year by which “major rehabilitation (or replacement) work is currently planned to be complete.”
“At the same time, the existing approach-span deck must be managed through preservation or rehabilitation to maintain required reliability and reduce service disruptions until 2040 or longer.”
Chender and interim Liberal Leader Iain Rankin both questioned whether the government’s increasingly challenging finances could play a role in what it decides to do about the MacKay.
Both opposition leaders said that the government did itself no financial favours by taking over responsibility for the bridges, a move that required absorbing $300 million in debt from Halifax Harbour Bridges, and doing away with the bridge tolls, a move that gave up about $35 million in annual revenue that previously went toward bridge maintenance.
Rankin said those moves could also make it more difficult to tap into federal funding for a new span because the business case is stronger when the province can demonstrate how it would finance its share of the project and support it through the long term.
Estimates of the cost of building a new bridge are well north of $1 billion.
“This tender I think is a sign that they are pushing down the road a critical piece of infrastructure — a major trade corridor — and not looking at a true strategy to replace the bridge,” said Rankin.
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