In the five years, two months and 27 days that Beaumont Hotel lease-holder Alison Mills has run the hotel and country pub on the western side of the Clutha River at the Beaumont Bridge, she has seen the bridge undergoing maintenance or repairs roughly every six months.
Now that the work is being carried out at night, her patrons had stopped complaining about the disruption to their travel plans.
''When they closed it in the daytime, people got really, really angry, but that's why they changed it.
''We used to grumble about it when it was in the daytime, because people were catching planes and things like that, but no, it is what it is - it has to be done.''
She said she and her patrons were used to the ongoing works and traffic interruptions.
''It doesn't really affect the locals that much, really,'' she said.
''The bridge has to be fixed, so that's what happens. People just get used to it.''
Mainfreight Transport Dunedin branch manager Barry Clark said his trucks plied the route every day between Dunedin and Cromwell but typically would not be travelling through Beaumont at night in the 7pm to 6am window when the bridge was closed.
''We probably won't be affected by it, because we would be through there before then, but if we're running late it would be a pain ...
''It adds cost to the business.''
Most trucking companies operated on a dollar figure per kilometre basis and detours could become costly.
''Any extra kilometres that we have to run costs us extra money,'' he said.
''[It's] money we can't recover from the customer, because it's not their fault. If we run an extra 50km it's an extra $100-odd on the cost.''
Road Transport Logistics operations manager Ken Thompson said the business, a rural transport firm covering Southland and Otago, had to be organised, but it, too, could handle the ongoing intermittent closures.
''We have managed to organise ourselves around those times pretty well.''
''Since they have given us reasonable notice, we've managed quite well, to be fair.''
He said about a third of the company's fleet of 74 trucks were high productivity vehicles and the bridge work was for the company's benefit.
''It's a positive. You've just got to work with it.''
The company could be strategic about the closures, he said.
''You dispatch your work accordingly.''
Crossing the Clutha at Beaumont
• The first crossings at Beaumont were by punt.
• Punts operated from 1860, free of charge.
• A wooden toll bridge was opened in 1874.
• A high toll was charged for crossing the bridge, so the ferry continued to operate successfully in opposition.
• Floods in 1878 wrecked most punts and bridges on the entire Clutha River.
• Debris from the Roxburgh and Millers Flat bridges destroyed the Beaumont Bridge, all of which later destroyed the Balclutha Bridge.
• The ferry was reinstated and remained the only means of crossing at Beaumont for nearly a decade.
• The second, existing, bridge was opened on March 3, 1887.
• It remains the oldest wrought-iron structure on New Zealand's highway network.
• It has three 35m and two 17.8m trusses supported on concrete piers.
• First and longest single spans of their kind in the southern hemisphere.
• Constructed by John Anderson, of Christchurch.
Source: handsoffbeaumont.blogspot
