The city of Coquitlam will ask for provincial government help to get a bailey bridge connecting with New Westminster replaced with two lanes.
At Monday's meeting, city council unanimously voted to apply to B.C.'s ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development for a dispute resolution process that Coquitlam hopes will see the deteriorating Braid Street bridge temporarily converted into two lanes, costing $1.7 million.
The move comes after a structural engineer in February reported the 18-year-old bridge had a "critical fatigue crack." And when it reopened two weeks later, the bridge was posted with a 15-tonne weight restriction.
The engineer also said the bailey bridge had to be replace by late 2014.
Bill Susak, Coquitlam's general manager of engineering and public works, told Coquitlam council a number of transportation improvement projects in the south of the city have recently come to a halt, including the North Fraser Perimetre Road (NFPR) and the Brunette Avenue interchange. And the Royal City has resisted efforts to replace the inter-municipal bridge with two lanes to support the 10,000 or so vehicles it carries a day.
In a letter to Susak last month, New West's engineering director Jim Lowrie wrote a two-lane bridge would be "counter productive, difficult to enforce and contrary to existing city and regional plans and policies.
"Moreover, the additional capital cost for a two-lane bridge compared to a single-lane bridge when used in this fashion is considered an unjustified expenditure of public funds," Lowrie wrote in his letter, dated April 16.
Yesterday, Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart said council and staff have tried to find a solution but the Royal City isn't budging on its stance.
As a result, he said, goods movement is tied up and traffic to Royal Columbian Hospital can be jammed. The gridlock is also spilling over on to residential roads in Coquitlam and New Westminster, Stewart said.
New Westminster Mayor Wayne Wright wasn't available for comment before The Tri-City News' print deadline; however, Coun. Bill Harper told the New West NewsLeader that New West supports the mediation process.
New West wants to meet with Coquitlam, TransLink, Transport Canada and transport ministry officials to reach "sustainable and livable goals."
"We have all sorts of concerns in making that a two-way bridge," Harper said. "There's all sorts of issues with the railway and Braid and Brunette, and there's all sorts of issues of getting traffic in and out of that area.
"To simply just go and double the bridge would harm New Westminster and that's why we're taking that position. We weren't the ones that built United Boulevard. They were the ones that built it and thought it would be plowed through to Brunette."
Susak said if the dispute resolution doesn't work out, Coquitlam is prepared to go to binding arbitration.
- with files from Grant Granger of the New West NewsLeader
