Why the Story Bridge won’t have a traffic lane repurposed for bikes and walkers

More than 160 days have passed since the Story Bridge’s footpaths were closed, forcing about 4000 daily walkers, bike and scooter riders into lengthy detours.

Council crews have started installing more than 1500 metres of steel frames to support a new fibre-reinforced polymer decking, with the city-side footpath to reopen “this year” and the eastern path in 2026.

But despite complaints the suggested detour is awkward, and at times unsafe, with riders sharing busy city streets with traffic, Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has again rejected calls for a traffic lane on the Story Bridge to be repurposed as a walking and cycling lane.

“Ultimately, the width of the lane on the Story Bridge is 3.1 metres, which is already narrower than a standard lane, so normally we’d have about 3.5 metres on a lane,” he said.

“When you add a water-filled barrier that would be required, it actually doesn’t leave enough room for a two-way cycleway.

“So we’d actually need to close down more than one lane on the bridge to make it safe.

“Even closing one lane would cause significant traffic disruption, but closing two lanes would cause absolute chaos.”

Heavier vehicles of 2.5 tonnes and above have been banned from the outside two lanes of the bridge – which requires a multimillion-dollar restoration – since 2022.

The weight limit excludes buses, trucks and private vehicles, such as the Nissan Patrol, BMW i7, Lexus LX and Mercedes-Benz G-Class.

The council said about six metres would be needed to carry the normal volume of pedestrians, cyclists and scooter users, but after adding barriers, only 2.5 metres would be left for an active travel lane.

But the Space 4 Cycling group argued parts of the existing footpaths were narrowed by safety railings, and some parts were only just wider than two metres.

A court in May shut down protesters’ plans to close all six traffic lanes on the Story Bridge for a peak-hour protest to draw attention to their calls for one car lane to be allocated for active transport.

They planned to protest on Sunday, August 24, but have postponed as a pro-Palestinian march across the bridge was planned for the same day.

The new footpath deck is similar to the South Bank boardwalk, and will have a load limit of 500 kilograms a square metre.

That is significantly higher than the 70 kilograms a square metre load – about the average weight of an Australian woman – recommended in a report handed to council before the crumbling footpaths were shut.

Council civil transport program director Tom Peters said the new footpath decking had high tensile strength, which meant it could span a large distance and transfer load without bending.

“It has allowed a very simple structure to be built to transfer the load onto the bridge,” he said.

Some traffic lane closures would be required at night as the deck was installed.

Previously, Schrinner said the decking, being custom-made overseas, would take at least 17 weeks to manufacture, which would indicate all the pieces would not be ready until at least mid-October.

Labor opposition leader Jared Cassidy said it was just “hopes and dreams” that the footpaths would be open by the end of the year.

“A $6 million cost for temporary footpaths that are going to be ripped up and thrown in the bin if and when the bridge is restored and another million dollars being spent on gaudy blue nets that are hanging underneath the Story Bridge to catch crumbling concrete,” he said.

The Brisbane City Council budget included $18 million for the Story Bridge over the next 12 months, including $6.9 million to install a replacement footpath deck and repairs to other parts of the bridge.

A business case for a full restoration of the bridge was expected to be delivered in 2026, and Schrinner previously said work would progressively be done over 15 to 20 years, while calling for an 80-20 funding split with the federal government.

With William Davis

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