Sunderland City Council has signed the contract with contractor Farrans Construction and steel fabricator Victor Buyck to finally build its new £117m road bridge across the River Wear, nine years after an RIBA design competition produced an “unbuildable” bridge.
The new link between Castletown on the north bank of the river to Pallion on the south will be a cable-stayed bridge supported from a 115 metre tall A-frame pylon, making it twice as high as Gateshead’s Millennium Bridge.
In line with the revised planning permission granted in August 2014 the carriageway will have two lanes of traffic in both directions, along with dedicated cycleways and footpaths along its full length.
The overall budget for the project is £117.6m, with Sunderland City Council providing £35.1m and the Department for Transport the remaining £85.5m.
“There has been talk for a long, long time that Sunderland has needed a major new road crossing over the River Wear and it’s an issue that has not gone away.”
Councillor Paul Watson, Sunderland City Council
Councillor Paul Watson, leader of Sunderland City Council, said: “A new bridge has always been a key part of Sunderland’s on-going regeneration. This announcement is great news for Sunderland and the wider region. There has been talk for a long, long time that Sunderland has needed a major new road crossing over the River Wear and it’s an issue that has not gone away.”
Architect Spence Associates and structural engineer Techniker originally won a RIBA competition to design a bridge at this location in 2005, beating entries from big hitters Frank Gehry, Wilkinson Eyre and Marks Barfield Architects.
The design centred on two independent curving bridge pylons and at 180 metres would have been the tallest bridge in the UK (the current tallest bridge is the 156-metre tall Humber Bridge).
However, the project was mothballed and after being revived in 2008 and winning planning permission in 2010 was finally abandoned after two bidders, Graham Construction and Vinci, were unable to value engineer the complex structure within the £120m budget.
