THE new bridge to reconnect the severed A432 between Downend and Yate is starting to take shape.
After eight 46m-long steel beams were hoisted into place by a 750-ton capacity crane in October, standing on a closed section of the M4, work is continuing apace to finish the job.
The last of three weekend motorway closures for the work started at 7pm on Friday October 24, with contractors first dismantling crash barriers to give the machines more space to work.
The huge crane, from Avonmouth firm King Lifting, was rigged up with four lorry loads of ballast before starting to lift the beams two at a time, early on the Saturday morning.
The first pair were in place by around 7am. Each outer beam weighed 115 tons and each inner beam 85 tons.
The final ones were in place by the end of that day and, on the Sunday, workers brought in permanent glass-reinforced plastic formwork to create a mould for the concrete bridge deck.
Some work on the bridge can now take place while motorway traffic passes below.
Concreting of the deck will take place from late November through to mid-December and may involve some overnight closures of the motorway, but there will be no more weekend shutdowns between the Bristol and Bath junctions.
Earthworks will follow the deck work, followed by the building of concrete abutments that will help carry the load and hold back the earthworks, as the bridge starts to take shape.
National Highways engineering team manager Terry Robinson said: “We are pleased the job was finished ahead of schedule and hope it caused minimum disruption.
“We’ll continue to work at pace on the new bridge, and hope to have it open to the public in Spring 2026.”
Terry said the bridge’s estimated opening date had to be approximate because of the potential effects of unpredictable winter weather.
He said: “The earthworks will be affected if you get a long period of rain, and the waterproofing is temperature-sensitive.
“Ideally you’d want to do this in the summer, but to deliver it as quickly as we can we have to take risks and do things outside ideal times.”
National Highways carried out other motorway maintenance while the M4 was closed, and work is also underway on the approaches to the bridge.
During the closure a video feed was set up next to the ring road and an observation point opened on the Winterbourne side of the bridge to allow people to watch and take pictures of the lift.
Among those who went along was the bridge’s design manager Liam Hennessey, who works from the Bristol office of global engineering firm WSP.
Liam said: “It’s not often we get something we’ve designed on our doorstep.
“You sit in rooms and plan for these things – there’s a lot of satisfaction from seeing it slowly go into place.
“It’s been a long time coming – I’ve been getting a lot of stick about it from a friend in Yate!”
