Business forum tackles Pattullo Bridge replacement
Municipal and transit officials weighed in on plans to replace the aging Pattullo Bridge at a business forum in New Westminster today (May 24).
TransLink wants to tear down the bridge, built in 1937, and erect a new six-lane replacement linking Surrey and New Westminster.
The project, which could be completed by 2018, has an estimated cost of up to $1 billion, according to TransLink.
Around 60,000 vehicles cross the bridge each day, a TransLink official told the crowd of business people and local politicians at the forum.
“It’s an important corridor for the movement of people, connecting the region, and for trade and the movement of goods,” said Sany Zein, director of roads for TransLink.
Zein said problems with the Pattullo Bridge include increasing maintenance costs, a lack of road-safety features, and the inability to withstand an earthquake.
“It’s a bridge which has served its purpose. Fifty years was the design life; we’ve squeezed 75 years out of it,” he said.
TransLink owns and operates the Pattullo Bridge.
Today’s forum was co-hosted by the Surrey Board of Trade and the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce.
The 60-plus people who attended also heard from the City of Surrey, the City of New Westminster, and the Lower Mainland Chambers’ Transportation Panel.
Paul Lee, Surrey’s rapid transit manager, said the replacement bridge must connect to commercial truck routes south of the Fraser to aid goods movement.
“From Surrey’s point of view, this bridge is essential…and a well-connected bridge is critical to economic development of the city,” Lee said.
He also said the city’s transportation committee supports a six-lane bridge that includes good facilities for pedestrians and cyclists.
“Surrey recognizes that a well-functioned, multimodal bridge is absolutely critical as an element in the transport infrastructure that is needed to serve one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada,” he said.
Jim Lowrie, New Westminster’s director of engineering, said his community is concerned about TransLink’s plan.
“Simply speaking, the road network in the city of New Westminster is not designed to accommodate the traffic that will be brought over by a six-lane bridge,” he said.
The City of New Westminster argues more options should have been presented to the public on the future of the Pattullo Bridge.
“There were other options studied but none of these options have been vetted publicly,” Lowrie said.
Bernie Magnan, with the Lower Mainland Chambers’ Transportation Panel, said the bridge is important to the region and must be replaced.
“It is used as a transportation link by many businesses located on both sides of the Fraser [River],” Magnan said.
TransLink still has to work out how the project will be designed, funded, and constructed.
Comments
6 Comments
lol
May 24, 2012 at 6:59pm
lol…. keep building more roads… more bridges = more traffic...
cochran
May 24, 2012 at 7:35pm
I'm in total agreement with New Westminster's concern about replacing and re-positioning a new Patullo bridge. I live in Surrey and am now retired these last 12 years. I commuted the Patullo as well as the Port Mann bridge for close to 35 years. In those earlier days commuting was a breeze, if you didn’t mind getting to the bridges by 5:30 am. If the old Patullo were to remain standing, it should be down-sized to accommodate single axle vehicles, cars and pickups only, for daily commuters . The trucking industry can wail all it wants, but it is getting an exclusive highway built for it, for the movement of mainly in- and out-bound cargoes. The new “Patullo” bridge should not even be considered to being positioned either up-stream nor down-stream, of the old bridge, but rather at the confluence of the “Queensborough” and “Alex Fraser bridges, springing off from the South Fraser Perimeter Road across the river to link up with Marine drive in Burnaby, which circumnavigates New Westminster altogether. It boggles the mind, that engineers would even think of placing a bridge that crosses the river at E. Columbia, to continue upstream on the north side of the river, when in fact the major cargo movement will be east and south through Surrey, originating from the Fraser-Surrey docks and DeltaPort. The present nightmare commuter corridor through McBride-10th Ave. needs to be discontinued, as well as the heavily traveled Stewardson Way.
edoherty
May 24, 2012 at 8:33pm
You can let TransLink know what you think about spending a billion dollars on a 6-lane bridge to nowhere at http://pattullobridge.ca/
p lg
May 24, 2012 at 8:50pm
As far as Translink and the Port Authorities are concerned who gives a #*%! about New West.
It's time commercial trucking builds their own roads and bridges. Fed up with the amount of container truck traffic on the roads these days. We are financing a road for these trucks to get to ports and intermodal yards rather than having trains and barges at vessel ports move these containers to markets outside of the region like they do in China. Use the goddamn river to transport containers up river.
In L.A. they financed transportation infrastructure to and from the ports with a $20 levy on all containers coming into and out of the port rather than tax the residents and citizens of California.
It's time we put the corporate hijackers in their place and had them fully finance their roads and bridges.
Want to travel through New West, private business should finance and build a tunnel for their trucks under the river and under new west to their own roadways.
no sense of irony
May 24, 2012 at 10:04pm
Is there anything a business group cannot solve?
Evil Eye
May 26, 2012 at 9:37am
What is really needed is a new 3 or 4 track rail bridge, replacing the decrepit Fraser River Rail Bridge. The GVRD had a plan for a combined road rail bridge back in the 70's and it is time to revisit that plan.