Preserve and rehabilitate the bridge

The Alexandra Bridge should be preserved and rehabilitated for continued use as it is a significant piece of national engineering history, and has high heritage value to the community.  The basis of the decision to replace the bridge should be reviewed given:

• The interest by citizens to preserve this bridge.
• It is part of the skyline and a feature identified with Ottawa and Gatineau, much like bridges in other cities.
• It is feasible to restore the bridge based on other examples of historic bridges being restored in Canada and around the world.
• The economic reasons and conditions for the replacement have changed since the original studies and analysis were made, where it may make more economic sense to keep the bridge.
• The parameters for rehabilitating this bridge can be readily determined, and a team engaged rapidly to work on it, versus the time it would take to have an international design competition, undertake the design, and build an innovative bridge design.
• There are risks to pursuing an innovative bridge design that may lead to longer delivery times, costs overruns, and possibly having to deal with design and construction defects that come with innovative designs.
• It is possible that contemporary bridge designs and materials would not last as long as the Alexandra bridge under the same use conditions, and/or failure to do regular maintenance.
• A rehabilitated Alexandra Bridge with improvements to details, materials and maintenance procedures could last longer, based on other historic bridges that are even older and are still in use.
• A Life Cycle Costing Analysis has been done, but a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) has not. This is required as part of the project decision making process that would look at the aspects of embodied energy and environmental impacts, and is a tool to use for ensuring the government is meeting sustainable goals that the it has committed to. Projects that include LCAs often determine that retention and rehabilitation is a better approach than demolition and replacement, particularly if the use is generally the same and much of the structure can be retained.
• A rehabilitation project would create more local and regional jobs than new construction.
• Any enhanced traffic requirements identified for the Alexandra Bridge location should be provided by additional interprovincial bridges that are long overdue, and should be happening in parallel.