DISRUPTION caused by work to repair a treasured Oxford bridge will be worth the bother, according to the man in charge of the £500,000 project.

Traffic on the Grade II-listed Folly Bridge, over which Abingdon Road carries traffic in and out of Oxford, will be reduced to one lane from Wednesday until next month for repairs to its east side.

The route is one of the busiest in and out of the city, with about 15,000 vehicles crossing it on a normal day.

Martin Brain, Oxfordshire County Council’s principal engineer for bridges, said: “We want it to be here for 100 years and another 100 years after that. The art of bridge maintenance is not thinking about what you’re doing at the moment, it’s about keeping it for generations after that.

“We’re certain to get complaints about the traffic and disruption. I think of it in the long term of the bridge – three or four weeks of disruption compared to 200 years. I don’t apologise [for the work] because eventually you would need to close the bridge if you did no work at all.”

Work started on the bridge on September 4 but traffic lights will be put up tomorrow night and operated from Wednesday.

The temporary signals will be in place for 24 hours a day. A footpath will be in place for pedestrians at all times.

Disruption will last until October 20, ahead of the Westgate Centre’s official opening four days later.

Work on the bridge, which was built in 1820, can only take place during certain parts of the year because of bats which live underneath it and move away twice a year. They have been temporarily roosted at a site further down the city’s stretch of the River Thames.

Work to repair the west side of the bridge is pencilled in for next spring.

Today, work will start to put up a 30-tonne steel frame which will support the bridge during the maintenance.

As part of that work engineers will bore through the road surface to replace limestone bricks which have been damaged by water penetration. A stretch of Abingdon Road will also be resurfaced over five or six nights, which have yet to be confirmed.

Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for environment, Councillor Yvonne Constance, said: “Many people have been very keen for the road to be resurfaced here and I hope road users will be pleased by the end result.”

To help traffic, an eastbound closure to Thames Street will be introduced at its Abingdon Road junction. Motorists will be diverted along Speedwell Street and St Aldates.

Other £150,000 work to protect the riverbank close to the bridge will be completed within weeks.