Trucks plugging up Pattullo Bridge; Surrey mayor not happy
Posted March 6, 2013 5:31 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SURREY (NEWS1130) – A quarter of truck drivers who used to take the Port Mann Bridge before it was tolled are now plugging up your commute on the free Pattullo Bridge crossing. Surrey’s mayor is not happy about it.
Dianne Watts says the 25 per cent diversion figure from the BC Trucking Association means all of those semis are rolling on to side streets and Pattullo feeder routes that were never designed to handle that kind of traffic. She says TransLink needs to find solutions, as it’s responsible for the regional road network and goods movement.
“It’s been a concern from square one,” she says. “I mean we knew there would be some diversion and our staff is monitoring it.”
“The South Fraser Perimeter Road, when it’s completed, that will assist us as well,” Watts adds. “But we need to be looking at this because it’s around congestion and it’s around communities really taking the impact.”
At a Metro Vancouver mayor’s board meeting, TransLink said it needs a couple more months before it can come up with anything tangible.
Watts wants to consider options for truckers to offset their $9 toll on the Port Mann.
“Well you have to look at [whether] there’s a possibility of having a monthly pass,” she says. “Right now there’s companies that have large fleets that get invoices of 150 pages.”
Right now, truck drivers are only given a 50 per cent discount between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. as an incentive to drive overnight, a measure that was brought in with the hope of reducing truck congestion during the day.
