Airport Parkway Pedestrian Bridge has design flaw-work suspended

Crews have begun to demolish the pedestrian bridge that was supposed to cross the Airport Parkway Wednesday, May 2, 2012.

The Airport Parkway bridge has a design flaw which has forced the City of Ottawa to suspend all work on the project.

The $6.9 million bridge had a completion date of late this year.

"The construction of the airport parkway pedestrian bridge is being temporarily suspended while a new design and engineering firm team confirms the best path forward, ' said Nancy Schepers, Deputy City Manager of the City of Ottawa.

There is concern the parts that connect the tower to the bridge platform won't remain stable throughout the bridges lifecycle.

Astrid Grant can see the construction from her backyard and noticed work had stopped.

"I don't even hear a hammer going. At least we heard some lonely guy hammer way back when but there's been nothing going on," says Grant.

The much maligned bridge also had problems in the winter of 2012 with the quality of concrete.

The bridge tower was demolished and the bridge construction started from scratch.

The City of Ottawa is now promising a third party review and legal action against the firm responsible for the flaw.

Delcan has been brought in as the new engineering firm that will review the entire project and decide how to move forward.

The city of Ottawa hopes to have a better idea of how to proceed by mid-November. That's more than two years later than the projects original completion date of October 31, 2011.

Astrid Grant says the city is gaining a bad reputation when it comes to building bridges.

"Living right next to it I see, I saw the beginning to this. I don't know if I'll ever see an end."

With a report from CTV's John Hua.