21-05-2025
Hampden Bridge load limit to send truck drivers on hours-long detours
The decision to reduce the load capacity of an aging, heritage-listed bridge linking the south coast to the southern highlands could add millions of dollars to transport costs a year, according to Nowra transport operator Mark Nelson.
Transport for NSW announced at the start of May that by the end of the month Kangaroo Valley's historic Hampden Bridge would have its load limit reduced from 42.5 tonnes to 23 tonnes.
It said the decision was made to relieve the pressure larger vehicles put on the 127-year-old timber-decked suspension bridge and reduce the amount of maintenance work required, while investigating options for the future.
Mr Nelson said the reduction would see over 100 truck movements a week diverted up to Macquarie Pass or Mount Ousley at an extra cost of $750 per load.
"Transport costs will double in and around the valley to get these jobs done … from concrete quarry products, timber, steel, everything will be affected," he said.
He said it would devastate any earth moving jobs he currently had on the western side of the bridge, creating a four-hour round-trip detour up through Wollongong's Mount Ousley.
"It will make work unviable on the western side of the bridge because I will be fronting customers with something in the order of a $1,200 to $1,500 float charge to get machines via Mount Ousley into Kangaroo Valley," Mr Nelson said.
The stress was echoed by local Kangaroo Valley dairy farmer Graham Cochrane who has property on both sides of the bridge.
He said the changes would add a three-hour round trip to his work day at a cost of almost $1,000 per week.
"There's been no planning as far as I am aware," Mr Cochrane said.
"It's our of our control."
Transport for NSW regional director Cassandra French admitted the decision was made, with no consultation, after "extensive monitoring and testing over the last 12 months" revealed "significant wear and tear getting harder to predict".
Transport for NSW has extended the deadline for impacted business for an additional month and now have until the end of June to map out new transport routes.
Mr Nelson accused the department of knowing about load issues since 1968, when they first proposed a reduction, and said it was "amazing" that alternate options do not yet exist.
"They're saying now they'll start to explore options. They didn't say 'we're doing this, it's going to be 12 months until we implement a new bridge'," he said.
"They have no idea what they're going to do."
Transport for NSW submitted a peer reviewed paper on managing the suspension bridge for the Austroads Bridge Conference in 2022 where it said the 1968 proposal to implement a limit of 20 tonnes was "not feasible due to traffic demands".
The report said the bridge had been exceeding its design load of a 14-tonne steamroller which had led to "complex behaviours" including "bouncing up and down, swaying and twisting".
In 2010 the nation's only surviving timber-decked vehicular suspension bridge from the 19th century saw major rehabilitation and repairs when timber was replaced with steel, more stringers were added, and new timber decking was laid.
The transport department report said the improvements reduced the risks of the bridge breaking in two halves, one end of the bridge jumping off the abutments, stringers breaking, and diagonal rods falling into the river and harming people canoeing below.
The improvements added 50 tonnes of weight, or dead load, to the bridge.
With Kangaroo Valley Road a critical route for around 150 years between coastal and regional producers Mr Nelson said it was time for a new bridge and fast.
Transport for NSW's Ms French said a new 77-metre-long bridge would require significant investment and would need to be prioritised against other statewide projects.
"We've got the team working on lots of different options at the moment and we're also doing maintenance there over the next few months," Ms French said.
She said the department was looking at options to potentially reinstate the load limit but encouraged drivers to also look at the national heavy vehicle route planner which helped people depending on the loads they were carrying.
Transport for NSW said farmers and businesses impacted by the halving of the load limit could talk to the government authority about possible compensation through the public liability team.
