Happy Easter East Street!

East Street will be closed to traffic at its junction with the High Street in Epsom for three weeks from Easter 2011. This closure is needed for Network Rail to replace the railway bridge located between this junction and Hook Road.

Work is scheduled to start on 23 April and continue until 15 May 2011. The road will also be closed to pedestrians for the first three days of this closure. The period affected includes not only the Easter and May Day bank holidays but also Polling Day on 5th May for the borough council elections and the national referendum on voting reform for parliamentary elections.

By this time work is expected to be at full swing on the rebuilding of Epsom Station, which is likely to involve the closure of one lane in Station Approach, so fears are growing of traffic chaos in the centre of Epsom over this period.

However the old riveted steel bridge that has spanned East Street for so long has reached the end of its working life and for safety reasons it needs to be replaced as scheduled, however inconvenient this may be to road users.

There has been a railway bridge in this location for 150 years, since the line from Victoria to the old Epsom Town station in Upper High Street was extended to meet the new line from Waterloo at the present Epsom station. It is not known whether the current bridge is the original structure or a subsequent replacement. Currently steel bridges are designed to last for 120 years so it might be either. However at least we are not likely to experience the trauma of a second replacement during our lifetime.