A bridge is considered to be any structure which carries the highway over a river, canal, railway, motorway, etc, or, carries a railway, motorway, etc over the highway.

Trafford Council is the Highway Authority and the 'Bridge Authority' for the bridges owned by the Council.

Trafford Council owns and is responsible for around 300 highway bridges. There are also other bridge owners/authorities and the largest of these are the Highway Agency, Railtrack, British Rail Property Board, The Environment Agency and British Waterways Board.

The maximum permitted weight of lorries was increased in February 2001 to 44 tonnes. All bridges have had to be assessed to see if they could cope with this increase safely.

Pending strengthening, public safety is maintained on those bridges assessed as weak by using temporary weight restrictions or other measures and restrictions.

Work carried out under the strengthening programme gives priority to principal road bridges. For substandard bridges on the non-principal road network, decisions are made whether to permanently weight restrict rather than strengthen. Each bridge is considered on its merits taking into account safety, economic and environmental factors.