This is when Preston's 'new' Old Tram Bridge will open - and what it will take to build it

That is the aim of the team working to restore the 220-year-old cross-river connection between the city’s Avenham Park and South Ribble.

At an event to mark the opening of a new exhibition showing off the chosen design for the new bridge – in the park’s Pavilion Cafe – the Lancashire Post was told that the ambition is for the pedestrian and cycle link to reopen in December 2025.

While the complexity of the project means the date cannot be set in stone, Lancashire County Council and Preston City Council say work will be completed by early 2026 “at the latest”. Demolition of the existing bridge is set to begin in July.

The scale of the logistical and technical feat that will be required to install its replacement was also revealed. A crane that will necessarily be bigger than the bridge itself will be used to lift the pre-assembled parts of the deck into place – with the specialist kit set to occupy an area the size of two football pitches on the South Ribble side of the river.

Chris Wilding, Lancashire County Council’s bridges and structures design manager, says the biggest challenge is the fact that the site of the Old Tram Bridge is around a mile away from the nearest road. That means a new access track is having to be constructed between the cross-borough link road in Penwortham and the south bank of the River Ribble.

“Just getting the equipment here is difficult,” Chris told the Post.

“Being able to bring a new bridge in and lift it into place is quite a logistical challenge, in that we’ll need probably one of the biggest cranes in Britain…to undertake that work.

However, that job is one of many that will be jostling for the accolade of being the toughest aspect of the £6.8m project.

The timeframe for delivery has largely been dictated by the fact that the Ribble – perhaps unbeknownst even to many locals – is a salmon river. As a result, work can only take place in the channel itself between June and the end of September each year in order to comply with ecological rules.

Thet periods during which the river can be entered over the next 18 months will be punctuated by the installation of two of the new bridge’s three piers – the first this summer and the second the next. Each will take 14 weeks, with a two-metre deep socket having to be drilled into the rock in the river bed to anchor them in position.

However, Chris says that workers will certainly not be short of something to do in between those two key milestones within the project.

“The abutments [where the bridge meets the land] will need quite a bit of rebuilding and configuring to accept the new bridge – and we’ve also got a fairly substantial pier that’s going to be on the land between the south abutment and the river channel.

“There are an awful lot of ecological constraints to take account of [and] environmental issues to bear in mind. We’ve basically designed the bridge around satisfying those requirements,” Chris explained.

The bridge deck will be craned into position in September 2025, followed by work to fit out the new structure with its adornments, reinstate the land where the crane will have stood and remove the temporary access road.

Chris suggested that anybody with time on their hands during the installation of the deck could do a lot worse than witness the process first hand.

“It’s not something you see every day…it’s going to be worth watching.

“It’s always interesting seeing a bridge lifted into place – but then I would say that,” he laughed.

‘NOT A BRIDGE TOO FAR’

Local politicians say the new Old Tram Bridge will be worth both the wait – and the cost.

The bridge was shut just over five years ago after being deemed at risk of imminent collapse.

It took until January last year before funding was secured for a replacement structure when the project formed part of Preston City Council’s successful £20m bid to the government’s Levelling Up Fund.

Asked by the Post whether the £6.8m bill for the bridge was a worthwhile use of such a significant share of the city’s regeneration cash – especially when an alternative footbridge over the Ribble is located just a quarter of a mile away – city council cabinet member for community wealth building and city centre regeneration and development Valerie Wise did not hesitate in her response.

“Absolutely,” she said. “When my children were young we used to cycle [and] roller skate across the bridge.

“I think it’s a great way to be spending some of the money that the council was lucky enough to get from the Levelling Up Fund.

“It has to be the Old Tram Bridge, it’s an historic bridge – we need to have it again. The other bridge is a private bridge [and] it isn’t particularly well-maintained.

“[The new tram bridge] is going to be an amazing asset for Preston,” Cllr Wise added.

As part of the £5m Levelling Up Investment Fund that Lancashire County Council created to bolster successful bids by district authorities like Preston, County Hall has committed £1m to the project.

Aidy Riggot, the county council’s cabinet member for economic development and growth, told the Post that the arrangement was an example of the authority’s efforts to “complement” the work of the districts within its patch.

“We wanted to enhance the size and scale of Levelling Up projects [for Lancashire]. So, effectively, Preston’s Levelling Up Fund [package] is £1m bigger — and because we’ve put a million into this, it means Preston have got £1m more to spend on their wider projects, too.

“This is an iconic [bridge] which will be a really visible example of a Levelling Up Fund project that will be of huge benefit to a lot of people,” County Cllr Riggott said.

Meanwhile, South Ribble Borough Council leader Paul Foster stressed that the bridge was of huge “historical importance” to people on both sides of the river – and key to their quality of life.

“It links South Ribble and Preston beautifully and [is] part of the sustainable green corridors that we’re working on. I also think as a society we have to maintain these cultural structures that we have,” Cllr Foster added.

A DESIGN FOR LIFE

The Preston-based architect behind the new tram bridge design – the aptly-named John Bridge – says the start of on-site preparations mark the culmination of five years of work that started out as something of a joke.

On April Fool’s Day 2019 – just a couple of months after the crumbling bridge had been blocked off – John published a rather otherworldly suggestion for a replacement structure.

“It was for a Norse mythological rainbow bridge – [and] it actually did fool a few people,” he recalls. “[But it gave] me the idea of…actually [coming] up with a realistic design for a bridge.

“Our first formal design was a very green garden bridge idea bringing the park across the river, growing trees – and it was very curvaceous with engineered timber.

“The lovely thing about that was it spurred on a …serious idea to come up with a proper proposal that could get some grant funding.

“With the help of the Friends of the Old Tramroad Bridge and [former city councillor] Daniel Dewhurst, who orchestrated a schools competition, that really provided a formalised approach from the community to say, ‘Hey, we really want a new bridge – please can you help?’ The [city] council took that very seriously, listened to the community and put together the Levelling Fund [bid],” said John, who runs Studio John Bridge.

While it was originally proposed that three designs be put to the public to get their views before a final one was chosen, practical constraints meant John’s suspension-type bridge was the only one ultimately deemed suitable.

With the bridge having been rebuilt on several occasions in the two centuries that a link over the Ribble has stood at that point, only the abutments of the original now remain – and they will be retained in the new design. And John told the Post that the steel structure that will soon span the river will be a long-lasting one.

“It will have a minimum of 50 years before it needs maintenance – and that’s only because of the design specification that’s required.

“[Having only two piers in the water] minimises the impact on the river. It will help ecology, it will stop branches of trees getting lodged – [as] happens now with the existing trestles – and therefore those maintenance issues that often occur are minimised as well.

“The idea of the [design] with a bit of an angle on it [was to make it] strong enough to be able to have the most efficient amount of steel that’s needed…but also the size that we needed to …get it up the tram road,” John explained.

South Ribble-based Eric Wright Civil Engineering will construct the bridge, with Lancashire County Council providing project management and technical expertise.

Glenn Cookson, chair of the Friends of the Old Tramroad Bridge, said seeing everybody involved in the project in the one place at the exhibition launch “brought to life” the vision the group has so long had to restore the link across the river.

He said that 18 months was a “reasonable” timeframe for completion of the project, to ensure that it was done “properly”.

However, he added that the group would be “keeping a close eye” on progress after campaigning so hard to have the bridge replaced.

The government has required most of its Levelling Up Fund projects to be delivered by March 2025, with exceptions made only in limited circumstances.

SEE FOR YOURSELF

The exhibition at the Pavilion Café in Avenham Park traces the history of the Old Tram Bridge and features CGI imagery of the new bridge. It is free and open seven days a week during the cafe’s operating hours.