Kathmandu, August 9

The government is preparing to conduct detailed survey and design for the maintenance of ageing motorable bridges built on the strategic road network (SRN) across the country. In the current fiscal year, the Department of Roads will start a survey of around 140 bridges in this regard.

As maintenance of old bridges gets low priority as compared to construction of new ones, old bridges are collapsing on a regular basis almost each year for the last few years.

In 2013, a bridge over Dudhaura river along the East-West highway in Bara sank. Similarly, last year, Mahottari’s Ratu bridge collapsed and recently, Jai Shree bridge in Nawalparasi caved in affecting vehicular movement in the East-West highway.

These are just a few instances. A study conducted by the DoR three years ago had revealed that around 100 bridges constructed along the SRN are in need of immediate maintenance and over 400 required major maintenance. The situation of the bridges were revealed based on a study of the physical condition of over 1,700 bridges built on SRN and feeder roads.

“We construct new bridges but when it comes to maintenance of old ones, they have been getting less priority,” said Saroj Pradhan, chief of Bridge Project of the DoR. As per him, they had started work with focus on maintenance of bridges built on SRN a few years ago.

However, work in this regard is not moving ahead in a planned manner due to multiple reasons including low budget allocation.

The government has allocated Rs 750 million for bridge maintenance works in the current fiscal year. DoR is conducting detailed survey and design of around 20 bridges in seven packages, spread across all five development regions. In the last fiscal year, detailed designs of 60 bridges were prepared under three packages for repair works. Based on the study last year, some bridges on the East-West highway and Bagmati bridge of Thapathali, among others, will be repaired this year.

The Ratuwa bridge of East-West highway in Jhapa, Koshi bridge of Postal highway in Saptari, Bighi bridge in Dhulikhel-Sindhuli-Bhittamod highway in Mahottari, Pokhara-Baglung-Beni-Jomsom’s Jhotne Khola bridge, and the Bageshwori river bridge of Seti highway in Doti are some of the bridges that have been planned for maintenance within this fiscal year after the detailed survey and design.

In a bid to hire a consultant for the detailed design this year, the DoR has already invited expression of interest to shortlist candidates and issue request for proposal.

Since fiscal 2012-13, the DoR has been conducting study of bridges needing maintenance under the Bridge Improvement and Maintenance Project (BIMP) and carrying out maintenance works. The project, supported by the World Bank, had earlier set a target to upgrade all bridges of SRN and feeder roads to ‘fair to good condition’ within fiscal year 2016-17.