New bridge for Belfast steps forward: Bid to link city's Sailortown and Titanic Quarter across River Lagan
Attempts to build a new bridge over the River Lagan have stepped forward, politicians pushing the local council to link with Stormont to get its final construction costs.
The project would link the traditionally industrial Sailortown area next to the city’s docks with the Titanic Quarter, which has been developed in recent years to include film studios, the O2 arena, the Titanic Belfast attraction and a number of new residential buildings that are both high-end and high rise.
Although Sailortown used to be home to thousands of families, mainly those of people who worked either on the docks or at sea, housing clearances to make way for a motorway decimated the area in the 1970s and left it increasingly struggling to maintain a community.
Now moves are under way to regenerate it, with politicians thinking a bridge across the Lagan linking the two areas “has the potential to transform this part of Belfast”.
There’s already a bridge across the river leading to a junction near the Titanic Quarter, but it’s part of the M3 motorway and as such only for traffic.
A motion jointly lodged with Belfast Council by SDLP and Green Party politicians reinforces the Sailortown bridge would be for pedestrians and cyclists only, while arguing the structure would “open up parts of our maritime heritage which have been inaccessible for too long” while boosting regeneration and creating “new opportunities for communities on both sides of the Lagan”.
The bridge has already received shared island funding to pay for design work, with councillors now pressing the council to link in with Stormont to identify and source money for final construction costs.