The western A52 Clifton Bridge as seen from the river bank.
FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY
Closing the Clifton Bridge Alex Romankiw Senior Engineer – United Kingdom
atromankiw@hotmail.co.uk
This article has been published on the following blog: https://www.roads.org.uk/blog. It is republished here with kind permission of the author and the blogger.
On 6 February, the Clifton Bridge, a road bridge spanning the River Trent and carrying the A52 road to the west of the city of Nottingham (county of Nottinghamshire, England), was suddenly closed for emergency repairs, bringing Nottingham to a virtual standstill. What has gone wrong - and how can such a major problem come as such a surprise? Civil engineer Alex Romankiw explains in this article.
I
t’s very easy for infrastructure to be taken for granted. Railways have
was unexpectedly closed under emergency conditions, cutting a vital
been around for hundreds of years, roads for over two thousand
regional link and paralysing the city. Highways England have since
years in one form or another. Often the travelling public do not realise
announced that it’ll be undergoing repair work, and unable to reopen
how much work is required to keep infrastructure working - or how
fully, until 2021.
immense the disruption is when things go wrong.
Understandably, there was outrage on social media, frustration at
On 6 February 2020, the residents of Nottingham found out exactly
the disruption - and initially, information from Highways England was
how bad things could get when a defect was detected in the A52 Clifton
slow to appear. In this article I decided to explain why these sorts of
Bridge in south-west Nottingham. A major structural issue meant it
incidents happen, and why we can expect more incidents like this.
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N.36 - 2020 DECEMBER - ipcm® Protective Coatings