Route Improvement Update: Burwood Highway Pedestrian Bridge

Just an update on the construction progress of the Burwood Highway Pedestrian Bridge at the intersection of Mountain Highway. For those with a foggy memory, the EastLink Trail currently crosses at this T intersection via three separate pedestrian activated traffic lights, which at the current moment, if a rider abides by the law and only rides when given a green man/bike light, it could easily take five minutes to cross from one side to the other! The new bridge would slash riding time to around 30 seconds. Quite an improvement I must say.

It was announced in a letter to local residents last November that the bridge should be finished early this year. The bridge reached another milestone today with the early morning delivery of the 2 bridge beams which will be joined together to construct the span over Burwood Highway. Whilst the design is different to other EastLink pedestrian bridges, in which there only the path and side walls, this bridge has the path, sides as well as a metal structure held up by poles with go up above head height then over the path as a partial covered way kind of structure. I will try to get some photos tomorrow and update this post.

In other pedestrian bridge related news, the Maroondah Highway Pedestrian Bridge has started drilling the pylons into the ground on the southern side for the access ramp to the main span while the East Malvern Pedestrian Footbridge is now CLOSED. A detour has been put in place along Malvern Road. I feel for regular Gardiners Creek / Scotchmans Creek Trail users having to put up with these long-term detours. At least the upgrade results are almost always worth the detours.