Footbridge Responsibility

[Arun Sharma]

Greetings

A friend in Brockenhurst contacted me this evening regarding a local footbridge which seemingly had lost its number plate. This is not the new footbridge and lifts at the station but the one indicated in the map segment below at

Grid Ref SU 30051 01898. This forms part of a footpath and continues on the southern side of the railway and is the first footbridge passed heading South West from Brockenhurst to Sway.

The question was really, whose responsibilities are these bridges? - Are they Network Rail's responsibility or the local council's?

[iands]

Looking at the 5-mile diagrams the footbridge number is 39X, at 92 miles 970 yards (approx). By no means a definitive answer, but if there is no access from the footbridge to the station/platforms (and there doesn't seem to be looking at Routeview), and the main abutments are "outside" the railway boundary, there is a distinct possibility that this bridge is the responsibility of the Local Authority, though there seems to be two bridge supports on the station platforms which may well imply a degree of involvement on NR to at least inspect these supports as part of a contractual/delegated level of responsibility.

As I say not a definitive answer, and there will no doubt be several similar examples in other areas where NR have full responsibility.

[eastglosmog]

Looking on Old maps, it appears that the bridge replaced a foot crossing that was slightly further north, sometime between 1869 and 1897 (probably when the platforms were extended southwards over the location of the foot crossing).  Probability is that the bridge is a railway responsibility, as it is not a new route.

[Trog]

I would suspect that if the footpath predated the railway, and the foot bridge was erected to carry the path over the newly constructed railway, it will be the railways responsibility to maintain. If the foot bridge was built to serve a new footpath created since the construction of the railway, then the maintenance of the bridge will be the responsibility of the council who agreed to adopt it on construction. In both cases there will be exceptions, and special cases.

[4630]

For anyone trying to visualise this footbridge and its position at Brockenhurst, here it is in a photo that I took on 5th September 2004. 

 

As mentioned by @iands above, you can just make out that the footbridge is supported by a couple of slender supports, one on platform 1 & 2 (Up side) on the left and the other on platform 3 & 4 (Down side) on the right.

 

[Arun Sharma]

Thank you all for your assistance

 

Arun

[Wheatley]

Generally the structure belongs to Network Rail but responsibility for maintaining the public right of way over it is the local authority's.  There are a lot of potential complicating factors though, exceptions, agreements otherwise and historical oddities, pretty much every one is different in one way or another !

Edited June 3, 2020 by Wheatley

[Nearholmer]

Yes indeed.

 

Sometimes a local authority or developer that causes a new bridge to be built and opened pays not only for construction but for maintenance, sometimes on a “make and forever maintain” basis, by means of what I think is called a “commuted sum”, basically a slug of money paid to the railway to transfer the burdens of ownership.