Port Mann gadgets to prevent future winter driving chaos

SURREY (NEWS1130) – Engineers are hoping a couple of high tech gadgets will help prevent a repeat of last month’s ice-bomb disaster that damaged hundreds of cars on the Port Mann Bridge.

Max Logan with the Transportation Investment Corporation, the company that oversees the crossing, says they should be up and running soon.  “The first will be installed on the bridge and on the approaches to the bridge,” he says.

“That technology will allow us to monitor the deck temperature and know what it is at all times.  The second type of technology is a new remote weather station as well as camera equipment that will be installed on the south tower.”

Logan adds the station will allow engineers to keep an eye on whether any ice is building up on the cables above the bridge deck.

The weather monitoring equipment should be operational by the end of the week.

“This is something that is going to be available to us in the event that we see weather conditions similar to what we saw on December 19th,” Logan says.  “It provides us with the bridge at the deck level and the upper levels of the cables on an ongoing basis, and it gives us a better ability to predict weather conditions.”

The bridge was closed for several hours on December 19th after large chunks of snow and ice started to fall from the cables above the bridge.

More than 200 people, who say their vehicles were damaged, have filed claims with ICBC and two people were injured.  On January 3rd more than 40 cars were involved in several crashes when the bridge was coated in black ice.

Logan says the bridge is now patrolled continuously when there is snow or sub-zero temperatures in the forecast.

Highway closures

Crews trying to mitigate the current high avalanche danger have spent the day working to re-open at least three highways into the Lower Mainland from the Interior.

Mike Lorimer with the Transportation Ministry says there was a slide that came down overnight, covering southbound lanes on a stretch of the Coquihalla, but nobody was caught up in it.

“It was clear of people, it was during the closure so we didn’t have any issues there,” Lorimer says.  “The avalanche technicians came in and did some more control work at that site.”

He says the Coquhalla has seen 75 centimetres of snow in the last 24 hours, and today another 30 is expected.  Both the Coquihalla and Highway 3 were closed for several hours.