Heritage advocate calls for return to historic bridge-building style
Bowstring bridges were once common in Wellington County
A Fergus man is urging the Township of Centre Wellington to consider local history as it makes plans for a new bridge redevelopment project.
The township plans to rebuild the aging St. David Street bridge in downtown Fergus beginning in 2018. In its place, Dave Beynon, a local writer and heritage advocate, said the township should build a bowstring bridge.
A bowstring bridge sports arches that rise over its deck, which is useful for spanning rivers with low banks.
They were once a popular style in the region, according to Beynon.
Kitchener's Freeport Bridge, which spans the Grand River on King Street, is a bowstring, as is the Bridgeport Bridge on Bridge Street at Lancaster Street in Kitchener. At one time, there was even a bowstring bridge where the current St. David Street bridge in Fergus stands today.
"If you look at a calendar of the region, almost any calendar you see will have a snow covered bowstring bridge at some point," Beynon said.
The style was developed in France around the turn of the last century, and by 1930s there were dozens in Wellington County.
"That turned out to be a good style of bridge for the area," said Beynon. "A lot of our rivers, the Grand River and whatnot, have low river banks."
A bowstring bridge spanning the Irvine River near Salem was granted heritage designation in 2014.
However, most local bowstring bridges have not fared so well.
"There's probably only five or six left in Centre Wellington," Beynon said, and they will soon have to be replaced.
"They're narrow, one lane bridges, and farm machinery nowadays can't really accommodate them. Fire trucks don't want to drive over them. So, there's a lot of reasons, and a lot of practical reasons, why they're going to disappear."
There are also practical reasons to forgo building new ones. Improvements in building materials have made them unnecessary, and the higher cost compared to regular bridge construction is a factor as well.
"I've been told the cost of a basic bridge [at the St. David Street location] is about $2.2 million, the cost of the type they're looking at building right now is about $2.5 million, and the cost of a bowstring would be an additional $1 million to $1.5 million," Beynon said.
On the other hand, building a new bowstring bridge could be a showpiece for Centre Wellington.
"If you go into Kitchener and you go in along Bridge Street and you see those four arches, that tells me I'm going into something really cool," he said.
"We could have the same."