BEING a chartered civil engineer working in the rail industry and having experienced daily the traffic congestion on the A64, it surprises me greatly that the Highways Agency has not used bridge jacking or thrust boring construction methods as a way of reducing the time that the carriageway needs to be closed.

This well-tried technique involves building the bridge to one side of the road and jacking it into position. This form of construction is commonly used for railway bridges where the closure of the tracks may be reduced to days rather than the weeks needed for conventional methods.

The cost of construction is obviously greater but in the case of the A64 it seems likely that the additional expense would be justified. It would be interesting to know why this method was not being used.

Anthony Clarke,

Brecks Close,

Updated: 09:28 Saturday, October 27, 2001