Part of the Barnet Highway closing for the long weekend

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COQUITLAM (NEWS1130) – A very busy route right in the middle of the Tri-Cities will be off limits for the entire long weekend.

As construction ramps up for the Evergreen Line project, a portion of the Barnet Highway will be shut down for more than three days.

As of 9 o’clock tonight, crews will block the Barnet between Ioco Road and Dewdney Trunk Road, as a large concrete structure is pushed into place adjacent to the Ioco Bridge to accommodate the rapid transit line guideway and part of the Inlet Centre Station. That closure will remain in effect until 6 a.m. Tuesday.

Scott Roberts with the Evergreen Line says it will be the biggest traffic disruption of the entire project. But he suggests it is short-term pain to avoid long-term headaches.

“There will be excavators and there will be trucks moving material away from the site during this process. The other option was to do it over 60 nights and that would have had a much more significant  impact on local residents. By doing this, it’s kind of like the ripping the band-aid off fast. We’re doing it over a long weekend as opposed to having impacts for 60 nights,” explains Roberts.

“This is fairly technical work; there’s a lot of set up and demobilization work. In other words, every morning we would need to have the Barnet Highway ready for the morning rush hour and the added time to rehabilitate the road every single night would reduce the amount of time you could actually spend pushing that box into position. Not having to rebuild the road 60 times for 60 consecutive nights is much more efficient,” he says.

“Doing it over three days makes much more sense.”

But those three days could be tough for people trying to drive through the heart of the Tri-Cities.

“I’ve lived in the Tri-Cities many times and I’ll tell you there’s not a lot of options when you shut down that area. It is a key intersection for everyone trying to get through the Tri-Cities,” says Kim Seale with the News1130 Air Patrol.

“When you shut down that little, tiny bit of the Barnet Highway from Ioco to Dewdney Trunk Road, you’re preventing a lot of traffic from flowing through there.”

Partial closures will begin at 7 o’clock tonight, with the full closure and well-marked detours coming into effect about two hours later.

“One of the routes you’ll have to think about, remember you have Murray which runs parallel with Saint John and that links up with Guildford by Newport Village, that is going to be a parking lot, I guarantee, from morning to night every day this goes on,” says Kim.

There is a possibility the work won’t be completed by Tuesday morning, which would then mean another closure of the Barnet Highway next weekend, November 15th to 18th.

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