The Demerara Harbour Bridge, which was closed on Monday at 11:59 pm to facilitate critical repair works, will reopen at 18:00h on Thursday – some six hours before it was scheduled to reopen.
This was announced by Minister of Public Works Bishop Juan Edghill on Thursday morning during a visit to the bridge.
“We are doing a lot of the fine-tuning […], and we are anticipating that by 6 PM this evening, the bridge will be open to vehicular traffic,” Edghill said.
According to Edghill, the early reopening comes after works have been ahead of schedule since Tuesday, when the bridge was closed.
He noted that the 44-year-old bridge is expected to undergo a retraction to ensure it is fully functional, and by 16:00h, there will be a final cleaning before opening.
“Persons can start getting themselves ready and adjusted for a 6 PM opening of the bridge,” the Minister said.
The bridge was closed to facilitate the replacement of span nine, which was damaged last year September when the Panamanian flagged vessel, MV Tradewinds Passion, crashed into the structure during a retraction period, rendering it inoperable for several days.
The new span nine was fabricated by a local company, Industrial Fabrications Inc (InFab), to the tune of $1.2 billion. Also, during the closure, the bridge management injected $85 million to upgrade the high span and another $60 million for internal works at several spans.
