Dear Editor
The city did a good job of managing traffic disruptions during the recent weekend closures of the Pattullo Bridge. I’d especially like to commend the city’s traffic staff for responding well to the very heavy pressure of southbound traffic that developed on 20th Street, crossing through town from Burnaby in order to get onto the Queensborough Bridge.
With southbound traffic backed up well into Burnaby, the intersection at 20th Street and Eighth Avenue was becoming gridlocked.
Worse still, plenty of southbound motorists were disregarding the pedestrian-controlled traffic light at Seventh Avenue, making the crosswalk unsafe for people walking to and from the 22nd Street SkyTrain station.
The city dealt with this by hiring flag persons to control both intersections over peak hours during the latter two weekend bridge closures. That solution probably wasn’t cheap, but it worked. This is the kind of flexible, solution-oriented civic administration that we like to see.
Richard Berrow, by email
