Saskatoon eyeing first ever pedestrian bridge

The city of Saskatoon is considering the idea of building the city’s first stand-alone pedestrian bridge.

An open call to engineering companies to send back conceptual designs for a pedestrian bridge that would connect Lawson Heights to the north east areas was distributed last Wednesday.

The city is looking for proposals to build a crossing over the South Saskatchewan River until Feb. 27 for a sewer pipe, with the possibility of a bridge, that would stretch from south of the waste water treatment plant on the west side of the river to the University Heights area east of the river.

All of this is to help the city make a  funding decision on a  sewer crossing that needs to be built by 2021 to accommodate Saskatoon’s growing population.

“The sanitary river crossing is required to service additional land on the east side of the river and must be completed by the end of 2021,” the city’s request for quotations document on the SaskTenders website said.

“This crossing creates an opportunity to also provide better active transportation connectivity between the east and west banks of the river.”

A conceptual drawing of a utility bridge from the 2015 City of Saskatoon Sanitary River Crossing Feasibility Study. (City of Saskatoon)

The new sewer pipes were initially pitched to the city in a 2015 feasibility study. Plans originally involved boring the pipes under the South Saskatchewan River, but were expanded to include the possibility of a pedestrian and cyclist crossing.

Estimates from the feasibility study range from $10 million to $15 million for an open cut sewer pipe crossing, with a utility tunnel beneath the river costing between $20 million and $25 million.

Bridge option costs were estimated between $12 million to $17 million for a utility-only bridge and $20 million to $25 million for a pedestrian bridge.

The request for quotations document lists three possible bridge types for engineers to consider: a suspension bridge, a cable-stayed bridge and a multi-girder bridge.

Any walkway in the concept design must be at least five metres wide.