The dismantling of a historic Winnipeg landmark began Thursday with the first section removed from the 114-year-old Arlington Bridge.
“This is an important day, marking the turning point where we can begin now to look forward” to a new bridge, Mayor Scott Gillingham said Thursday morning.
Decommissioning and removal work of the bridge — which was closed suddenly in November 2023 after a study showed it was in poor condition — will be done in two stages.
The first stage, focused on removing the south portion of the bridge from Logan Avenue to midway into the CPKC rail yard, is expected to last into October, according to the City of Winnipeg’s timeline.
“It’s a complicated project.… There’s over 50 sets of tracks that this bridge spans,” Gillingham said, commending the engineers tasked with the job.
“It has to be taken down kind of piece by piece.”
The Arlington Bridge, seen on Thursday, was permanently closed in November 2023 after a study showed it was in poor condition and could not be repaired or rebuilt on the same structure. (Kevin Nepitabo/CBC)
Preparatory work began in early June, leading up to crews removing the first piece of the actual bridge Thursday morning.
“Today is the first day of the real action,” said Damir Muhurdarevic, the city’s engineer for bridge projects.
The bridge spans the yards of Canadian Pacific Railway — now Canadian Pacific Kansas City — which were established between 1882 and 1889, and created a chasm between the north and south sections of Winnipeg.
The Arlington steel truss structure was built to reconnect them. The bridge, 657 metres long by 12 metres wide, was built between 1910 and 1912 and officially opened to the public on Feb. 5, 1912.
After it was indefinitely shut down in late 2023, city council approved $17 million for the decommissioning and removal, as well as an additional $5 million to begin design of a new bridge, in January 2025.
The Arlington Bridge, as seen from the women’s hospital near Sherbrook Street, has been a landmark on the city’s skyline for 114 years. (Darren Bernhardt/CBC)
The process to remove it involves cutting through the bridge deck and lifting out a span that’s supported on steel shipping containers.
The containers are positioned on a motorized flatbed that moves everything away “at a snail’s pace,” said Muhurdarevic, who is head of the decommissioning project.
After the containers are removed, the span is set onto the flatbed and taken to another part of the rail yard to be broken down. It will take about eight hours just to move out each piece, Muhurdarevic said.
Five spans will be done before the end of August — work that has to be done in co-ordination with CPKC, as the rail yard will remain active.
Damir Muhurdarevic, the City of Winnipeg’s bridge projects engineer, says the removal of the old steel trusses is a slow process that has to be co-ordinated with the CPKC rail yards. (Kevin Nepitabo/CBC)
“The rail yard told us that we have to give them a schedule in about 15-minute intervals, which is a very tough thing to achieve. Usually our schedules are over a day or a week or a month,” said Muhurdarevic.
The shorter intervals are needed because CPKC will stop train traffic underneath each portion of the bridge as it’s taken out, “and they would need to know exactly what we’re doing when,” he said.
“So 15-minute intervals is exactly what we’ll be doing … while we’re working above the rail yard.”
After the five spans are removed, the ramp leading up to the bridge deck from Logan Avenue will be removed, taking up the remainder of the schedule for this year.
Traffic in the area of Logan and Arlington Street will be intermittently affected and rerouted, but no full road closures are expected during the first phase of work, the city said in a Thursday news release.
Arlington Bridge, seen from the intersection of Arlington Street and Logan Avenue, in 1948. (University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections/Winnipeg Tribune Photo Collection)
The second stage of dismantling is scheduled to begin in June 2027 at the bridge’s other end, near Dufferin and Jarvis avenues. That should also take crews into September or October, said Muhurdarevic.
No full road closures are anticipated during that phase of work either, but traffic in the area of Logan Avenue and Arlington Street will be intermittently affected, the city says.
A late 2024 city report estimated the cost of building a new bridge at around $166 million, but that included roughly $16 million in removal costs, according to the city.
Funding has not yet been approved and “will be considered as part of a future council decision,” Thursday’s news release stated.
The city is still in the process of developing the design for a new bridge, which it says won’t be as steep as the original, making it safer for walking, biking and transit.
“We need to build a new Arlington Street bridge, that has been determined,” Gillingham said Thursday, adding the municipal, provincial and federal governments must all be involved in the funding.
When it does begin, construction will take four to five years, the city has said.