Last Monday marked four years of the Gloria storm that devastated the Barcelona coast and destroyed a large part of the emblematic symbol of Badalona, the Pont del Petroli. Recently, the Badalona City Council has begun the final procedures to begin its reform based on the project prepared by the Maritime Engineering Laboratory of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC).
The Councilor for Territory and Sustainability of the Badalona City Council, Daniel Gracia, estimates that the work will last six months and cost 3.4 million, which will be borne by the Consistory itself and the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. In the absence of administrative approval, the technical specification is concluded and "approved by the AMB", points out Gracia.
Next month, a municipal representation will visit Madrid to meet with those responsible for the Ministry of Ecological Transition in order to finalize the details for the preparation of climate and environmental impact reports, mandatory for the construction project and which must include the conditions of forecasting climate change.
The administrative concession that must be granted by the State Coastal Demarcation has expired, so it is also necessary to renegotiate it. Another peculiarity is that the works can only be carried out, for weather reasons, between the months of April and September. “If it is not possible this year,” the councilor clarifies, “we will have to wait for the 2025 time window.” “Most of the work will be carried out from the sea, so it is key to have guarantees of good weather,” explains Pere Vegué, head of the projects service of the Àrea d’Urbanisme.
Based on the design chosen by citizens in the public participation process, the final platform of the Pont del Petroli will have a circular shape, “like a disk, with a central opening” that the people of Badalona have already popularized as “the donut.” This large washer will be 13 meters in diameter and have an empty interior part five meters in diameter, which will be assembled from the sea, with large barges and specialized cranes.
The railings and wooden sleepers of the bridge will be renewed, as will the lighting. On the other hand, of the support pillars set on the seabed, which form 17 support porticos and are made up of pairs of pillars, only six can be used. Of these support gantries, three are double and offer more resistance at three points on the bridge walkway.
Of the 16 plates or elements of the bridge, which measure 15 by three meters, only six have resisted the onslaught of the storm and require repair. The rest will be replaced. Six new sections will be built in the final space of the walkway, which had already been removed due to the poor condition in which they were left.
The company that was hired to design the new structure, Raventós Engineering, according to Pere Vegué “must have taken into account the different bathymetry hypotheses” that occur on the Badalona coast. The key to calculating the resistance is the movement of the sand, which has already been analyzed in the simulation channel of the UPC laboratory. The variability and mobility of the sand banks makes calculations difficult to prevent, as happened during the Gloria, the accumulation of sediment under the bridge from causing more intense waves.
The new circular walkway of the Pont del Petroli will be able to have new meteorological and environmental study stations that will be able to obtain real-time data on the state of the sea. The location of a webcam is also proposed to access images of Badalona from anywhere in the world.
