Two New Bridges Coming to Corozal

Residents of the Corozal District are saying goodbye to the Laguna Seca and Pueblo Nuevo ferries and hello to two new bridges. Just before the Easter break, the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing opened the Laguna Seca Bridge, which is expected to provide easier access to Sarteneja, Chunox, and other villages in the area. Some minor works are still pending before the bridge is fully completed. The Pueblo Nuevo Bridge is expected to be completed later this year. We spoke with Project Engineer, Michelan Gilharry.

 

Michelan Gilharry, Project Engineer
“So I got to open the Laguna Seca bridge last week, Wednesday level of meaning that it only has the first layer of DBSD. It takes two. But like I said, the idea was to have it open before the Easter break, right? So we managed to accomplish that. So the commuters have a easier flow of traffic rather than waiting on the ferry. That bridge in length is a hundred meters, excluding the thirty-meter approaches which was done with MSE panels. The height of that bridge is about twelve meters in height. So that’s the description that I would like to give on the bridge. It’s about ninety to ninety-five percent completed. We still remain to do the guardrails and some erosion control features, line marking on the bridge itself. But it’s substantially complete. The second bridge is called Pueblo Nuevo. That’s still under construction at this time. We intend to have that completed by no later than September of this year. Because this project is a design and build project, technically, it has taken like over two and a half years. Because what was focused at the onset of this project was building of a portion of the road that was initially designed. Because of the scope or the nature of this contract, the contractor wasn’t technically obliged to start the bridge at the same time. It was until the design was completed. The design is approved, then they were able to start this bridge and that’s the reason we have a slight delay with respect to the other bridge, because It took us a long time to finalize, fine tune the details of the bridge and the cost, since the contract already had a numeration with it, and we now had to go back and design a bridge based on a figure that was already provided. So it was a challenge, but we anticipate that  since the contract is not going to expire until July, the bridge is still done in a timely fashion. Now the one in Pueblo Nuevo, we may need to seek some additional time to have it completed by when I stated in September.”