Restoration
To ensure its long-term future the bridge was closed to road traffic in February 2005. Essential maintenance included replacement of timber supports beneath the road deck. Although originally expected to reopen in late 2005, the bridge remained closed until 2 June 2008 as severe cracks were found in some of its iron girders. In March 2006 the bridge's footpath, which was to have been kept open during the restoration project, was closed at the request of Network Rail due to vandalism and the increasing scale of required works. Extra crash barriers on each side of the roadway were added leaving space for only one lane of traffic. The road deck has now re-opened only in a southbound (towards Gateshead) direction and carries only bus, taxi and north- and southbound pedestrian traffic.
Read more about this topic: High Level Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word restoration:
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)
“Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)