Highways England accused of VANDALISM after pouring CONCRETE beneath 159-year-old bridge dailymail.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailymail.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The group adds that “others are needed for proposed active travel schemes”.
The report concludes: “Our evaluation suggests that about one-third of the 130 bridges and tunnels earmarked for demolition or infilling by Highways England has demonstrable value, although another third has no realistic value and could reasonably be put beyond use without apparent consequences.
“It is recognised that the 3,100 structures of the Historical Railways Estate have to be managed appropriately to ensure they present no meaningful public safety risk.
“A handful of the threatened bridges carry A-roads and potentially hundreds of vehicles every day. Most however are on quiet country lanes and farm tracks, are in Good/Fair condition and show no signs of being overloaded.”
SIR - There s been a dispute over the future use of the Queensbury Tunnel involving Highways England threatening to fill it in over safety concerns, but it is still being used by cyclists. It has been shown that these historic constructions can be profitably utilised as with Sunbridge Wells in the centre of Bradford with pubs, restaurants and shops. And it is vital that this happens where possible. This is a real nuts and bolts local issue for real people and shouldn t be reduced to a cheap soundbite or punchline. And councils should do all they can to preserve these marvels of Victorian construction and allow public access. If tunnels get banned they ll just go underground.
Queensbury Tunnel | Cost of infilling disused Yorkshire rail tunnel now exceeds repair estimate
More money has been committed to the project to infill the Queensbury Tunnel than the estimated cost of a full repair, campaigners against its abandonment claim.
The Queensbury Tunnel Society claim that a full repair and restoration of the West Yorkshire railway tunnel for cyclists and walkers would have cost £6.9M.
Figures obtained by the Queensbury Tunnel Society show that £7.53M has so far been committed to the abandonment of the tunnel. With only 70% of preparatory work to infill the tunnel complete, the group claims that the final bill could top £10M.
DEPRESSED by the seemingly endless lack of progress on the Queensbury Tunnel project – Concern is voiced over tunnel study (Keighley News, January 28) – I asked the tunnel society why it hadn’t at least stepped-in to pay the peppercorn £50 per annum rent to keep operational the pump house benefitting the project. Part of its defensive reply was: “It is not the responsibility of a third party (ie the Queensbury Tunnel Society) to pay the rent owed by a multi-billion pound Government-owned company”. Maybe not, but a society ostensibly created to do all it can to keep the tunnel in good condition and to reopen it perversely chose to adopt a petty, tight-fisted, letter-of-the-law, not-our-problem-guv approach instead of acting positively to the tune of just £50 p/a to keep the tunnel pumped and their project viable.