ATHABASCA – More than a year after it was initially closed, discussions around the Colinton bridge, also referred to as bridge file 13833 by Athabasca County’s internal software, are back on the table.
During the Aug. 11 committee of the whole meeting, councillors voted 5-3 — councillors Tracy Holland, Gary Cromwell and Kelly Chamzuk were opposed — to recommend that council go ahead with removing the existing bridge, in order to prepare for further construction once funding is available.
“To me, there’s two serious options, and just fixing the bridge isn’t one given the finances,” said reeve Brian Hall. “Either we close the bridge forever, or we replace it with a new bridge.”
County interim director of infrastructure Mike Koziol presented a report to the committee that outlined options for councillors, and included options to remove the existing bridge, which he said would cost close to $300,000 instead of the $100,000 in his initial report, do maintenance on the bridge to increase the lifespan by two years for $284,000, or rehabilitate the existing bridge, which would increase the lifespan for five years, at a cost of $528,000. The estimated cost for a new bridge was $2,127,000, which Koziol believes will last for around 75 years.
“I think we should just get a loan for the complete replacement; we’ve been messing around with this for so long and people are getting frustrated,” said Holland. “We’re coming up on a new school year and we’ve really been dragging our heels.”
Councillors agreed that the bridge needs to be fixed, but the timeline and funding was more contentious. Holland and Cromwell were both staunch advocates for not waiting and using a loan to immediately pay for the project. On the other side of the table Hall and Coun. Rob Minns wanted to wait and see if the county could get funding from the Strategic Transportation Infrastructure Program (STIP), since it would fund 75 per cent of the project.
“To go grab that loan and just get the bucks to do this, that’s an opportunity cost of $8 million. If we get the loan, that’s what it costs us, since we lost the STIP funding,” said Hall. “With STIP, we would pay around $500,000 for the bridge, so why pay full price when we could take 25 per cent instead?”
Koziol recommended that if the councillors have already made up their minds they could skip the removal process and “have it done in one fell swoop.”
“If you have it in your minds that you want to replace that bridge, I recommend making the leap now and going to tender this fall as soon as you’re ready.”
The county applied for STIP funding for the Colinton bridge at the start of the year, but were unsuccessful — five other projects were funded, which gave some councillors confidence that they would get the needed funding come 2024.
“I truly am confident that we’ll get the STIP funding for this bridge,” said Minns. “I would like to see the bridge done too, but we need to look at the funding first. I think we’re letting the horse out of the barn too quickly; we can wait for that STIP funding and then go from there.”
In an Aug. 11 follow up, Coun. Natasha Kapitaniuk was able to go into further detail about how the bridge impacts Division 2 residents.
“For those north of the bridge, proximity to the Colinton Fire Department is impacted,” said Kapitaniuk via text. “Bus routes had to be changed, which added extra time to the routes, and nearly all the residents prefer to take that route into Athabasca; it’s much closer and it uses less fuel.”
The proposal will be in front of county council for a final decision Aug. 31.
