New Westminster is holding its breath to see what the transit referendum outcome means for the Pattullo Bridge replacement project.
Under the plan developed by the Mayors’ Council on regional transportation, the existing Pattullo Bridge would be replaced with a new four-lane bridge that could be expanded to six lanes in the future if needed. The results of the transit referendum, in which Metro Vancouver residents were asked whether they’d support or oppose a 0.5 per cent Metro Vancouver Congestion Improvement Tax that would be added on to the existing Provincial Sales Tax, are expected to be announced by the end of this month.
“We are all holding our breath here on the referendum outcome,” said Jim Lowrie, the city’s director of engineering. “I think we will see what happens after that. Obviously that will have some impact on TransLink’s decision.”
While the fate of the replacement project is uncertain at this time, TransLink recently announced it’s proceeding with plans to do $100 million in major repairs to the Pattullo Bridge next year. The 18-month project, which is slated to begin in 2016, would result in one-lane traffic in each direction on weekdays, closures at night and on weekends, sidewalk closures and prohibition of heavy trucks with more than three axles.
“We are working with TransLink now on traffic management plans,” Lowrie told the Record. “We are at a preliminary stage. They have done some preliminary modelling and we need to drill down a little deeper on how that affects our city network so that we can mitigate to the extent possible, with the removal of two lanes and evening closures and weekend closures. We have some time to work through those issues.”
Lowrie said the bridge project may require some changes to be made to traffic signal timing in New West. He said the city will be focusing on routes heading toward the Port Mann Bridge and the Queensborough Bridge and will be trying to optimize the signals and installing wayfinding signage for motorists.
Once the work gets underway, the City of New Westminster will be keeping an eye on the traffic impacts associated with the bridge closure.
“I think it probably makes sense,” Lowrie said of the closures being proposed. “Having one lane in either direction is probably the optimal way to do it. Getting trucks off is the big thing. We will be monitoring it. We will be taking our own traffic counts because we will be very interested in seeing the impact of taking trucks off the Pattullo Bridge and seeing how trucks respond to that.”
New Westminster has expressed concern about the impacts that tolls on the Port Mann Bridge have had on local roads, as truck drivers and commuters opt to take the free alternative. The city is on the record as supporting a new tolled four-lane Pattullo Bridge.
“We are very interested to see what influence the Pattullo has on truck movements. We have been monitoring it before. We have gauged the impacts of the Port Mann tolls and we did observe a fairly significant increase on our east/west corridors as a result of that,” Lowrie said. “We were also able to detect a bit of an adjustment with the opening of South Fraser Perimeter Road, which was shortly after. We were able to measure those fairly accurately on Royal Avenue, McBride Boulevard, Front Street, and we are very interested in monitoring the truck volumes while the Pattullo is closed for repairs.”
