Ahmedabad: The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has decided to demolish and reconstruct the 53-year-old Subhash Bridge from its foundations after fresh studies concluded that the structure had deteriorated beyond repair. The civic body will now have to abandon its Rs 236 crore restoration plan approved earlier this year.Municipal commissioner Banchha Nidhi Pani said detailed investigations revealed that the bridge’s substructure, particularly its piers, no longer possesses sufficient load-bearing capacity. “Cement concrete spalling has been seen in a few piers,” he said, referring to the flaking and crumbling of concrete from structures.The 453.75-metre bridge, a key east-west link across the Sabarmati river, was abruptly closed overnight on Dec 4, 2025, after engineers detected structural sagging and cracks in the parapet near Pillar No 9. The closure disrupted traffic movement across the city and triggered a series of technical inspections.Initial assessments conducted by consultants from the roads and buildings design circle, engineers from SVNIT Surat and experts from IIT Mumbai had indicated that the bridge could be repaired and strengthened.Based on those findings, the AMC’s standing committee in March approved a two-pronged strategy — repairing the existing bridge to make it operational within nine months while simultaneously constructing two parallel two-lane bridges to accommodate future traffic demand.However, subsequent and more detailed structural investigations painted a different picture. National bridge consultant Mahesh Tandon, along with teams from IIT Roorkee and IIT Gandhinagar, found extensive deterioration in the bridge’s substructure, leading experts to unanimously recommend complete reconstruction.“If we use the new superstructure on the old substructure, problems could arise in the 100-year design timeline. It is the unanimous opinion of all experts that completely removing the old piers and substructure will be an appropriate decision,” Pani said.The civic body will now place a formal proposal before the standing committee seeking approval for demolition of the existing bridge and construction of a new one. Officials said fresh estimates for project cost and execution timeline was being worked out.The decision marks a significant shift from the civic body’s earlier approach and raises questions over the bridge’s condition, especially since it had undergone three visual inspections since 2023 without any major defects being reported. The latest findings suggest that deeper structural deficiencies remained undetected until the bridge exhibited visible signs of distress late last year.
