In response to growing incidents of bridge abuse by heavy duty and overloaded vehicles, the Minister of Works, Engr. David Umahi has said the government was working on modalities to construct gantry with spikes to prevent such vehicles passage on bridges across the country.
Umahi disclosed this on Wednesday, at a press briefing in Abuja.
TheFact Daily recalls that a heavy duty vehicle had damaged the Keffi Bridge leading to the loss of three lives in July.
Responding to a trending video alleging a crack on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, the Minister maintained that the crack was on the sand filled section of the road which had not yet been completed.
He said: “that thing is not a structural failure at all, whether it is stone base you are using, or sand, or nitrite, it is bound to happen. The moment water is pounding on it, it has to erode. But you can go view where we have completed and you’ll never find such a thing, because we have closed, every aspect of the sand field or stone base field areas”.
The Minister therefore appealed to the public to disregard the report, adding that work was ongoing. “So please, I want the society to disregard that social media circulation and to be assured that, work is ongoing. And there is no section of the completed carriageway that has cracked”.
He however, hinted that there’ll be emergency repairs on selected road projects across the country. “We are having a very deep conversation on the Third Mainland Bridge and Carter Bridge.
We talked with the Federal Executive Council, and Mr. President directed that the ministry should articulate the exact situation and bring it to the Federal Executive Council for deliberation”.
Umahi announced that, “the third mainland bridge is safe for light vehicles, but not for heavy vehicles. We have closed it against heavy vehicles”.
Explaining the reason for the decision, he said, “we have also a problem with the heavy trucks that are loading beyond our headroom and are flying over us. We have a couple of them between Lagos and Ibadan, bridges completed in the last administration. Some of them have been knocked down.
“So some of such bridges were closed down against vehicular movement. And we are very concerned. It is difficult to moderate these vehicles that are overloaded. So what we have decided to do is to plant gantry before the end of the flyover and after the flyover”.
The Minister further disclosed that the headroom would be increased beyond the standard height and the gantry would have spikes to enforce compliance:
“We directed that instead of the engineering mandatory 5.6-meter headroom, which is the design standard, we are increasing beyond the standard to 6.5m so as to accommodate very undisciplined commuters.
“But also, we are putting gantry. This gantry is going to be lower than the bottom of every flyover and we’re going to have spikes. If you are coming and your over boarding load is going to touch our beams to bring it down, that spike will bring you down first”, he said.
