New Mary Yardley Bridge Installed

YARDLEY, PA —The new Mary Yardley Bridge has been installed.

After months of delays and endless discussion by borough officials, the deteriorated footbridge over the Delaware Canal has been replaced.

"The new bridge is in, the old bridge is gone," Borough Council President Caroline Thompson told Patch Thursday.

She said, though, that the public won't be able to use the pedestrian footbridge that traverses the Delaware Canal at the westerly end of Fuld Avenue for a few more weeks.

Thompson said that the bridge has not been secured into place yet and that some work still needs to be completed with footers surrounding the bridge on either entry point.

The existing wooden bridge was replaced with a fiber-reinforced polymer bridge.

In addition to replacing the bridge, the area on the east end of the bridge will be regraded. New stone will be placed on the towpath, new gravel will be installed on the approach driveway, and new topsoil and seed will be put in on the adjacent pervious area, according to plan details from Construction Journal.

In Borough Council meetings in June, officials voiced frustration about why the bridge project had taken so long.

At that time, Borough Engineer Patrick Foley said the bridge was currently sitting with the manufacturer, and borough officials were considering reaching out to local legislators to clear bureaucratic red tape with the state and get the required signatures to deliver the new bridge to Yardley.

"We can't seem to get the bridge installed," Councilman Uri Feiner said, adding that the borough had DCNR right-of-way that was created in 1987 and ended in May 2022, requiring the borough in March to extend it.

"It's just sitting in DCNR," Feiner said at the time. "It's not normal. We've been asked, 'Where's the bridge? Where's the bridge? Every other municipality can get it. It's been 15 months and this bridge is sitting somewhere. We can't accept this as normal. We have to find some way to push through bureaucracy. It's crazy that people won't sign a document that has been around for 35 years."