There's a small bridge on Lower Queen Street that is about to get a big upgrade.

Borck Creek is a major water course that conveys surface flood flows from the Richmond foothills and urban area into the Waimea Inlet. The Borck Creek system drains a total of 1430 ha located west of urban Richmond and comprises of 800 ha of hill country, 410 ha of intermediate terraces and 230 ha of floodplain. The catchment area includes the Poutama drain sub-catchment.

However, in a heavy rain event, the existing Lower Queen Street bridge is now the bottleneck in the Borck Creek catchment and the first site where flooding would occur.

It runs under the Lower Queen Street bridge next to Headingly Lane, but it’s not wide enough to pass sufficient stormwater flow. The new larger bridge will ensure water can flow away better during heavy rain, reducing the risk of flooding with further work being done downstream in the future to widen the channel out to the estuary.

The current bridge is about 14 metres long and is to be replaced by a new 48-metre-long structure which will allow the channel under it to be widened.

Plans include a cycleway under the bridge to link the Berryfiields cycleway with the coastal section of The Great Taste Trail.

During the reconstruction project Headingly Lane will be closed at the Queen Street intersection with a temporary road built extending Saltmarsh Lane to Headingly Lane and provide access to the Headingly Centre.

All going well, preliminary work on the approximately $11 million project is due to start in mid-May and expected to be finished by the middle of next year.