Eric Wright completes £5.9m East Manchester civils project
The Lancashire construction group’s civil engineering division has finished improvement works for the city council to remove the notorious pinch-point on the A57 Hyde Road in Gorton.
The pinch point had been created by a 19th century railway bridge and retaining wall, while the solution saw a replacement 26-tonne steel foot and cycle bridge lifted into place.
The new bridge forms part of the Fallowfield Loop walking and cycleway, additions to which are an important part of the city region’s Bee Network plans.
Additional works included moving the retaining wall and realigning the carriageway on the busy route through East Manchester. The work was delivered to programme.
Since 2015, Manchester City Council has applied a minimum 20 per cent weighting to social value when evaluating tenders for contracts, and EWCE said that the social value aspect of its work in the area, which included a 310,000 donation to local charity Read Manchester and a site apprenticeship programme, had been central to its success.
Diane Bourne, managing director of Eric Wright Civil Engineering said: “When we were awarded the tender for the project, we scored very highly on the social value aspect of our bid, so it was very frustrating that Covid restrictions meant we were unable to deliver the planned activity with local schools and colleges that had been programmed in.
“After discussions with Manchester City Council, we agreed that the next best thing would be to support the Read Manchester scheme, which helps children transition from Year 6 to Year 7 – something made especially difficult given the Covid-19 crisis.”
The new walking and cycling bridge being lifted into place
Looks great and certainly eased the congestion.
Shame it took 15 years from proposal to sign off.
By Neil
No mention of the controversy surrounding this project? The consultation that the council misrepresented the results for, the narrowing of the fallowfield loop while widening the road, the removal of pedestrian access to the loop. This was a horribly managed project.
By Barney
Stop greenwashing a road widening scheme. A beautiful old bridge that stood for hundreds of years was destroyed so that more Chelsea tractors could pollute the city. To add insult to injury the foot/cycling bridge is not even connected to the road NOR were cycle lanes put in below it to offer the choice of two wheeled travel into the city center. Manchester corrupt council cares not about the environment.
By Disaster
I don’t like it have been in gorton for 55 years. You
Are taking Gorton way
By Ray Galvin