A truck with a trailer-mounted cherry-picker has slammed into Melbourne’s notorious Montague Street Bridge, which is regularly struck by careless drivers.
The low-clearance railway bridge in South Melbourne is hit so often it has its own social media presence, and on Monday its dedicated Facebook page shared photos and videos of the latest crash, showing the boom lift lying on the road in front of the bridge and the truck stopped underneath.
“I think Coates needs to hire someone who can read signs. The elevated work platform was suddenly and violently lowered, minus the wheels it’d been mounted to moments before,” the caption of the post read, referring to the name of the equipment hire company that owns the cherry-picker.
In one of two videos included in the post a witness can be heard singing the tune to a famous song by rapper Panjabi MC when he saw that the driver, who came out to inspect the damage to the cherry-picker, was of Indian subcontinental appearance.
“The show goes on baby,” the man said before singing the tune.
In a second video the same man can be heard saying: “He just arrived into the country yesterday I think, he’s one of those skilled migrants we keep bringing in.”
“Yeah, there he is,” the man said as the driver reappeared.
“Don’t think that’s meant to be on the ground, fella.”
Posts on the same Facebook page show the bridge has been hit at least twice previously this month, despite lowered speed limits, two warning gantries, and a total of 26 warning signs on both approaches brought in to stop collisions in recent years.
The bridge has a height clearance of 3 metres, and cannot be modified or removed, while the road cannot be lowered.
“There are a number of reasons we can’t do that, so for example, the major utilities, gas, power and electricity run down underneath Montague Street and basically keep the lights on in places like Port Melbourne, Albert Park, St Kilda, Brighton,” the Department of Transport’s Chris Miller told ABC News last year.
“It’s not really an option to move that, and also if we were to lower the road, it would then become subject to the tidal flows.”
“To raise the bridge, obviously the route 109 tram runs across there, but there’s also a major maintenance tram depot just adjacent to the bridge, so the high amount of expense we would need to go to move that facility just doesn’t warrant the cost.”
Header image: Left, right, the bridge crash (Facebook).
