The bridge has been the item of concern for local people and politicians for years, even receiving $1.6 million in the 2013-14 budget towards ‘planning, design and preliminary works’ for its replacement.
However it seems the bridge is stuck in limbo again with no extra funding allocated in last week’s budget, despite its future being an issue for decades.
Fremantle MLA Simone McGurk, who has taken up the fight for the bridge’s future since winning the Fremantle seat last year, said an engineer’s report released 10 years ago showed the bridge needed replacing.
‘The line item in last year’s budget mentions ‘planning, design and preliminary works’ for the Traffic Bridge but the then Transport Minister Troy Buswell admitted in Parliament this was just for the bridge’s repairs,’ she said.
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The overall budget saw a small surplus of $175 million, with a number of saving measures implemented to help deliver an estimated $2 billion in lower net debt by 2017-18.
These include removing the $36 car registration discount for private motorists, lowering the transfer duty threshold for first home buyers from $500,000 to $430,000 and increasing land tax rates by 10 per cent.