Almost one year to the day since its last major closure, the bailey bridge linking New Westminster and Coquitlam is again closed due to structural defects.
Jim Lowrie, New Westminster’s director of engineering, said Tuesday that cracks were found on the underside of the bridge over the weekend.
The City of New West is now examining repair options, and Lowrie said the closure will likely last “at least a couple weeks.”
Coquitlam has long lobbied for a four-lane crossing to replace the single lane bridge, which was originally built in the mid-1990s. New West, on the other hand, contends that none of the replacement plans to date are satisfactory for the city’s needs.
“We’ve never tried to stop this from going ahead,” Mayor Wayne Wright said March 4. “But all of our numbers, all of our safety factors … have not been in the positive, from our position, for a double bridge. Having said that, we’re looking at it and we’re going to be making a decision that (won’t) be done for any other reason but to make it right for the future.”
Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart acknowledges that a region-wide approach needs to be taken to alleviate traffic and safety concerns in the Braid Street/United Boulevard corridor.
But Stewart also points out that Coquitlam has undergone traffic disruptions for the last five years due to Port Mann/Highway 1 construction and that his city has done its part for the betterment of the entire region.
Built in 1994, the bridge sits within New Westminster’s municipal boundaries and was temporarily closed in 2003 by the City of New Westminster.
But after the City of Coquitlam took the municipality to court, a judge ordered the bridge re-opened. Part of the fallout from that decision was a change to the community charter that now calls for an arbitrator to intervene in cases of regional significance that cross jurisdictions.
According to Stewart, an arbitrator has been chosen for the current dispute, though he couldn’t give timelines around a possible resolution.
