Planned closure of the Ava rail bridge walkway is imminent but Hutt City Council hasn’t given up on finding a solution to preserve pedestrian and cycle access in the medium term.
Councillors are very aware of the popularity of this Hutt River crossing point. For school students, Bob Scott Retirement Village residents, runners, dog walkers and plenty of others – including Ava station rail commuters – it’s an important and convenient piece of infrastructure.
But there’s also no getting around the fact it can’t be left as is.
The rail and sleepers are near end of life and if not replaced, could see the bridge closed and the Hutt Valley Line cut off within two years.
Work has been deferred for several years because of funding constraints.
KiwiRail learned last year it would get $52 million for urgent Wellington network upgrades, including the Ava bridge. But advice to the city council came too late for us to budget anything for the walkway in our Long-Term Plan.
The bridge was built in the 1920s with ownership of the walkway divested to council in 2006.
Okay, so just renew the bridge’s walkway and rail components with new materials and we’re good to go?
If only it were that simple.
The current walkway sits on extended sleepers that are attached to the bridge spans – this is not allowed by modern engineering standards. Another code requirement is that a walkway be at least 5 metres away from a railway line; the current Ava separation is barely 2m.
A replacement walkway can be built, so long as it is attached to Ava bridge’s concrete piers.
KiwiRail says it’s in the business of trains, not walkways, but will work with council if funding can be sorted.
At Mayor Campbell Barry’s instigation, KiwiRail is now drawing up potential designs for how a walkway could be incorporated.
Forgive the cliché/pun, but there’s a lot of water to go under the bridge before anyone can say there’s a viable/funded solution.
Another constraint is that KiwiRail is currently required by Government to spend the funding allowance before the end of this financial year.
More than likely there are cost savings if rail and walkway work is done as a package. It would be intensely annoying if some arbitrary accounting deadline torpedoed the chance to find a way forward everyone can work with.
As well as the money question – an early estimate for a clip-on walkway was $8 million – there’s also the fact the Government has pledged to fund and build the Cross Valley Connection (and Petone-Grenada Link) as a ‘Road of National Significance’ (RONS). The former would require a new bridge somewhere between the Waione and Ewen bridges. Would the Ava bridge walkway then be necessary?
The CVC-P2G project is still at an early ‘investment investigation’ stage and there are 16 other RONS.
Hutt ratepayers are facing massive capital costs, with $2.6 billion of three waters infrastructure work in the next decade, not to mention Riverlink.
Just as for every household budget, sometimes it can’t stretch to everything. But there’s no lack of will to find an Ava walkway solution.
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