Traffic Engineering

Roads and Highways - Bridges (General)

A bridge is a structure carrying the highway over a river, railway or another road, or, carrying a railway or road over the highway.

We are the highway authority and we own and are responsible for 51 highway bridges and footbridges.

There are also other bridge owners/authorities and the largest of these are Transport for London (trunk roads), Network Rail (railways), British Rail Property Board (disused railways), the Environment Agency (main rivers).

As a rule the bridge usually belongs to the organisation (or its successor) that had cause to need the bridge in the first place. Ownership of bridges has been transferred in some cases, such as when the responsibility for a route changes.

Our bridges are inspected every 2 years and a programme of maintenance work is drawn up. Incidents of damage through vehicle collision, storm damage, or other causes are investigated as soon as possible.

In the case of damage to bridges by vehicles, reporting of the vehicle details may mean it is possible for us to claim the cost of the repairs to the bridge or culvert.

All of our bridges have undergone a programme of structural assessment to ensure that they are capable of supporting normal traffic load.