Time begins ticking for Swing Bridge – Japanese team begins assessment for replacement

Published by BBNTEAM at October 17, 2024

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Posted: Thursday, October 17, 2024. 9:36 pm CST.

By Aaron Humes: The Ministry of Economic Development (MED) and the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing (MIDH), in partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), welcomed the JICA Survey Team (JST) during a press conference to discuss the Swing Bridge Replacement Project on Wednesday.

The iconic 101-year-old structure will be replaced, but first, the JST will assess local needs and develop a project concept, which will then be discussed with the Government of Japan to confirm the feasibility of implementing the project under Japan’s Grant Aid program per Hiroyuki Morimoto, Team Leader: “The objective of our survey is that basically this project was requested by the government of Belize by the government of Japan for the project implementation under Japan’s grant aid project so what we need to do is to collect all the necessary information to verify that this project implementation is under Japan’s grant aid project, and also we need to do a technical study the engineering design, and also the cost estimate…”

Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer in the Ministry, indicated that both the replacements for the Swing Bridge and Belcan Bridge further upstream will be fixed structures, meaning all four crossings of the Haulover Creek in Belize City (the others being the Belchina Bascule Bridge and Chetumal Street Bridge) will be fixed in place: “…the idea is not to have the bridge swing anymore because we don’t have sufficient vessels going along the Haulover Creek that requires swinging movement of that structure.”

Moody detailed some of the data to be collected: “We have already given them the general concept of what the government would prefer we have also looked at the technical specs in respect to its cross section and the type of construction that we believe would be more conducive to our environment and to the location of where it is so we will also be supporting them in the gathering of additional information they will also need additional hydraulic information that we will have to gather form the Met department and there is also some transportation data that will need to be assembled as well in terms of traffic counts and traffic studies and so the ministry of infrastructure will have a full role in the implementation that they will be executing at this point in time.”

The survey is expected to be completed by next November 2025, with a further 30 months estimated for the actual replacement of the bridge.

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