Tale of two bridges..
Today was the official opening of the £3million pound Riverside Bridge in Cambridge, Partially funded by Tesco through a s106 agreement on its Newmarket Road store (All we know is that £1.7million came from 3rd party sources). Isn’t it crazy that the exact amounts are not easily publicly available and that it seems council policy to obfuscate the data.
The bridge is interesting as that it bifurcates into separate lanes for cyclists and pedestrians, although my bet is that pedestrians will use the cycle lane when its wet and slippy. It contains a rather flash and expensive looking seating arrangement. There isa selection of photos on my flickr account.
Here is the Cutter Ferry bridge just upstream of the glittering new landmark, replaced a couple of years ago (including all the bridge supports etc). Precise cost not known but the year that it was included in the County Council (2003/04) budget we know that the TOTAL spend on ALL bridges in the county was £2.6million pounds so its fair to assume that it probably only cost £500K or so. (Although once again were do you find the information?).
So is the new bridge value for money or would the other £2.5m or so been spent on other cycling bridge initiative’s in Cambridge? and when are we going to get meaningful transparency in local government budgets!