NATIONAL Highways has anounced the date it intends to close the M4 between Bristol and Bath to demolish the condemned A432 Badminton Road bridge.
The motorway is expected to shut between the Bristol and Bath junctions at Hambrook and Tormarton from Friday March 21 to Monday March 24 while the bridge is taken apart and removed.
The bridge, by the Wick Wick roundabout between Downend and Coalpit Heath, is currently open to pedestrians and cyclists.
It will be completely closed around two weeks before it is demolished, so engineers can remove asbestos pipes.
In a Facebook video published by South Gloucestershire Council, National Highways route manager Sean Walsh said the closure date of March 21 to 24 was “provisional”.
Engineering team manager Terry Robinson said the closure would be in place for 60 hours in total, first to move crushing machines onto the motorway and then to remove the edges of the bridge, before allowing it to collapse onto a protective mat covering the carriageway.
The rubble will be crushed and moved off the motorway before being taken away for recycling as aggregate and steel.
Details of the official diversion route have not been published, although it is likely to be the same as for last October’s closure, using the M32, A4174, A420 and A46.
Both the official diversion and other routes between the two junctions, including Westerleigh Road and smaller rural roads, were congested during the last closure.
Last year’s closure saw a culvert dug under the motorway to take gas, electricity, water and fibre optic cables previously carried within the bridge structure.
Most of those have now been moved, with the rest due to move before March 21.
Speed up call by MP
One of the MPs whose constituents are affected by the bridge closure called a debate in the House of Commons to pressure the government to speed up the reopening of the bridge.
Claire Young secured the adjournment debate on January 29 to raise the plight of the area’s overloaded country roads and businesses affected by the closure.
National Highways, which is responsible for the bridge, closed it in July 2023, severing the main road between Bristol and Yate.
Engineers found “accelerated deterioration and cracking” in the steel reinforced concrete, which made it unsafe to carry vehicles.
The government agency says the replacement bridge will open in March next year.
Thornbury & Yate MP Ms Young said: “The official diversion is long, with many of the 16,000 vehicles a day ending up instead on local country lanes like Henfield Road, Ram Hill and Down Road.
“These roads were never designed to take such heavy traffic and it’s making them unsafe, damaging road surfaces, causing long delays, and, in the case of Henfield Road, exacerbating flooding.”
Call for road and business funding
She called on the government to commit to funding South Gloucestershire Council to repair the damage to local roads.
Ms Young also called for “viable businesses” affected by the loss of passing trade to be offered funding similar to covid payments, “to ensure they survive this closure”.
And she called on the government to work with National Highways to bring forward the reopening of the road, recognising the “high level of disruption and the dismay locally at the length of time the work is taking”.
The MP also raised questions about wider issues including the safety of post-tensioned concrete bridges, similar to the condemned Badminton Road bridge.