Lincoln's Pelham Bridge reopens

Right through the weekend teams were finishing installing the safety barriers, putting up the road signs and painting the lines. 

One of the last jobs to be done was to cut the expansion joints into the bridge. There are five expansion joints in total running all the way across the carriageway on Pelham Bridge. 

Principal engineer, Richard Waters, explains: 

"When you have a long structure like Pelham Bridge, the bridge will expand and contract as the temperature changes. The structure is designed to accommodate that movement, but when it comes to the road surfacing on top, it would crack apart if we didn’t put in expansion joints. 

"The joints are cut down into the road and pavement and packed tightly with a rubber membrane that can squash and stretch as the concrete and steel underneath reacts to the weather. It has to be one of the last jobs we do because we cut directly into the new road surface to fit the expanding material." 

Although the bridge has reopened, there will be some work to finish off around the expansion joints where the pedestrian stairs join the bridge. These works will not affect any traffic going over the bridge.  

Cllr Richard Davies, executive member for highways at Lincolnshire County Council, said: 

"We maintain over 1,500 bridges across Lincolnshire, and Pelham is one of our longest and busiest. A re-waterproofing job like this was always going to be a big operation and I'd like to thank residents in Lincoln for their patience whilst we did these repairs. 

"I know the closure has caused disruption, but after stripping the bridge deck back and finding it in a worse condition than we'd anticipated, it shows how necessary these works were. 

"We took advantage of the bridge closure and carried out necessary resurfacing along Canwick Road too, meaning much less disruption for drivers on that side of the city, as well as smoother, safer journeys."