The sorry state of Bailey bridges

We are not really surprised to know that frequent collapses of Bailey bridges have been reported across the country. Truckers, overloading their vehicles, go into these decades-old bridges causing them to fall apart. Although there are signs warning drivers of the dangers of overloaded vehicles on the bridges, most of them do not pay heed to these notices, leading to accidents that take precious lives and disrupt communication.

What does puzzle us though is that this is a scenario that has been played out over and over again for years and yet no steps have been taken to fix it. Why this inexplicable lethargy regarding maintenance of these bridges? According to a report in this paper, the Roads and Highways Department (RHD), the authority in charge of the maintenance of such infrastructure, had done a preparatory survey in 2015 that found most Bailey bridges to be in unsafe condition; some of them had already collapsed. The lack of proper maintenance had left most of the bridges in precarious conditions, the survey reported. So what has the RHD been doing for the last four years? Why have these bridges not been repaired or replaced?

Another important oversight has been the practice of vehicle owners modifying their vehicles to accommodate more load than they are supposed to be carrying. These modifications are illegal yet these vehicles manage to pass all fitness tests from BRTA. How is this possible?

As far as maintenance issues are concerned, we hope that the RHD will take immediate steps to repair/replace the dilapidated Bailey bridges. According to an engineer of RHD, a database of bridges is being created to help set maintenance priorities. She has also been quoted in the report saying that all Bailey bridges would be replaced by concrete bridges. We sincerely hope that implementation of such improvement plans does not take forever. Bailey bridges are but temporary structures and should have been replaced long ago by permanent ones.