FACTS ABOUT THE DEMERARA HARBOUR BRIDGE
Guyana Chronicle
July 2, 2003
* The Demerara Harbour Bridge was commissioned on July 2, 1978 by then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.
* Following the opening ceremony, Prime Minister Burnham approaching from the Peter Hall end, and Deputy Prime Minister Ptolemy Reid from the Schoon Ord, West Bank (the two leaders were on opposite ends), met in the centre of the bridge in a symbolic gesture of East meeting West.
Construction of the Demerara Harbour Bridge began on the 29th May 1976 and was completed in June 1978, 25 months later.
The original idea for the bridge was proposed by Captain John Patrick Coghlan in 1952. Coghlan had done extensive feasibility studies on the possible construction of a bridge spanning the Demerara Harbour, including estimated traffic, tolling proposals, funding avenues, a hydrographic survey, and a subsoil analysis. He had even contacted one contractor, Mowlem and Company who had provided him with some figures for his cost analysis. The proposal was rejected by Sir Frank McDavid, Financial Secretary and Treasurer of the colonial government of British Guiana; McDavid posited that the money could be better spent.
. The bridge is 6074 feet or 1851 metres long. or one and a quarter mile long and 24 feet wide and carries two traffic lanes. Vehicles traveling on the bridge should not weigh more than 72,000 pounds.
There are 61 spans in the bridge numbered 1 to 61 going from east to west. There is a high level span, Span No.34 and two retractor spans, Spans Nos. 9 to 10.
. The first components for the bridge arrived in August 1967; Guyana Stores Limited handed over three cranes in November 1976, the assembly of the first floatation was done in March 1977; the construction of the first floatation span, Span No. 3 in May 1977; the completion of the high level span in position in January 1978.
The East and West approaches to the bridge were constructed using 395, 000 clay bricks, which covered a total area of some 99, 565 square feet. It was the first time that such a massive bricklaying project was undertaken in Guyana. Only one of the workers involved in the five-week project had any sort of experience in bricklaying. The bricks were manufactured by the Bel-Lu Clay Brick Factory which was at the time manufacturing about 100, 000 bricks per week.
The total cost of the Demerara Harbour Bridge was $37, 800, 000. The cost was divided into several sectors: purchase of bridge components, $29, 700, 000; purchase of bridge spares, $2, 800, 000; purchase of cranes and pile-driving equipment, $1, 100, 000; purchase of additional electrical components, 600, 000; and construction expenditure on the bridge, $3, 600, 000.
Out of nine Guyanese engineers that worked on the bridge, eight were actually graduates from the University of Guyanas Faculty of Technology. They were Rickford Lowe, Hamlet Hope, Winsley Pearson, Prem Singh, Winston December, Baburam Singh, James Dukhan and Paul Henderson, are all holders of the Higher Technical Diploma and were assigned to work on various aspects of the bridge at various times.
The Demerara Harbour Bridge is not, as is widely believed, the longest of its kind in the world. It is in fact, only the fifth longest.