Pine Creek Bridge Substructure Assessment Report

Recently Council commissioned a report dated November 2018 that focused on the structural assessment of the capacity for the existing Bridge Over Pine Creek superstructure for Articulated, B-double and A-double vehicles. The assessment report has primarily determined the capacities of the existing girders and compared against the demand imposed by the truck loading.

Additionally; Council commissioned another report March 2020 that focused on Options Study for the upgrade of Pine Creek Bridge to allow passage of PBS 3A HML vehicles across the bridge. The options considered for the study are as follows;
• Full Bridge Replacement.
• Replacement of Bridge Superstructure (guard railing, deck and girders).
• Strengthening of the existing structure by replacing the deck and utilising the existing girders with additional shear connectors.
• Strengthening the existing structure by welding doubler plates to the girders and altering traffic conditions to allow only single lane travel.
• Construction of a new floodway in place of the existing bridge, subsequently dropping the road level.
This report investigates the feasibility of each of these options by assessing against a set number of criteria as agreed upon by Council as identified in the Project Basis Report.
Through analysis of each option, the Options Study has concluded that Option 3 – Strengthening the Existing structure is the recommendation of this report that this option be investigated further.

Neither reports targetted specifically the substructure of the Pine Creek Bridge - for option 3 to come to fruition, Council requires a high degree of confidence that the substructure will have the structural capacity or longevity to compliment option 3.