One of the first things I learned in one of my traffic engineering courses at university was that canada has 32 million transportation engineers so it would be appreciated if Ben would show his credentials when it comes to engineering because as it sits his opinions on the matter are no more educated than the other 70 000 transportation engineers in Prince George.

Lets try to take the politics out of the process as it is all going to our heads.

There is always the option of making the city-owned Cameron Street bridge into a toll bridge.

The city already has $ 7.5 million (according to Mr. Meisner) and thousands of commercial vehicles crossing the reconstructed two-lane bridge at, let's say, 3 dollars per crossing would pay the required borrowing off in just a few years.

It would also address the present safety and noise/pollution issues in the residential areas which are being subjected to the truck traffic day and night at present.

After the bridge is open for traffic again heavy trucks will be banned from using the detours that are in place now.

This is neither a political or engineering opinion, just another way of looking at the topic and how to solve the problem rather than just walk away from it as the Mayor has done so far.

Bypass Prince George? And what are those tourists gonna miss? The Railway Museum, U.N.B.C.,Waterslides at Esthers and the Casino? Whoop de doo!!!! We can stop and see the errr, uhhh , Hmmmm?, How about the ...? Nope? Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Eat here and get gas if you have to.

Put a toll on the Cameron St. Bridge. Give me a break. The difference between using the Cameron St. Bridge and the John Hart Bridge to get downtown to 3rd and Victoria is approx 3 Minutes. Do you really beleive anyone would pay a toll when they could go around. The actual truck traffic that uses this bridge is minimal and would never in a 100 years pay for this bridge by charging a toll. You can shelve that idea.

It would be like increasing the cost of a ticket to a Cougers game from the present average of $12.00 to $18.00 to cover some of the loss from this facility. Increase the price and you will reduce the number of fans going to the games, and as a result lose more money (Catch 22)

People in this town seem to be incapable of thinking any problem out to a reasonable solution.
As an example we have ample proof that the population of Prince George has not increased one iota in the last 10 years. The best projections in the next 10 years are negative or 1% per year growth. Is this to hard to grasp?? Why do we need a new bridge.

What City anywhere in Canada (Other than Prince George BC) would build a new bridge for 21 Million dollars to service a disputed 9000 vehicles per day, especially when you have two other bridges across the same river within 2 miles.

Only those people who have no regard for taxpayers money, politicians who count on taxpayers (voters) to be naive, and contractors who love to get these big contracts would suggest building another bridge.

A good engineer with a Bull Saw, a Claw Hammer, and Car Jack, could repair the Cameron Street bridge so that it could be used for at least the next 10 years. Whats the chances of that happening.

There has been a plan in place by the Provincial Government since the 1960's to run a Bypass along Foothills North to join with the Hart Hiway at Summit Lake, and South to join Hiway 97 at Stoner BC. This of course would entail building a new bridge across the Fraser. The problem is the increase in population in this area that was forcast to justify this bypass never materialized, and therefore it was never done. I suspect that twinning the Simon Fraser in the fall down plan.

With no increase in the local population projected for the next 10 years, and a real good chance that the population and industry will in fact decline, there is really no need for futher bridges until something of real significance can be shown to warrant it.

Repair the Cameron St bridge and go back to doing your every day business. Remember we are just a small City with a population of 77,000 people, most of who work for a living and do not appreciate the continous waste of taxpayers money.

3 Bridges across the same river within 2 Miles (5 Km) of each other at a total cost of some $80 Million is ludicrous. The only way you could justify this would be to advertise it as a tourist attraction to show how stupid we are and how we have no regard for taxpayers money. If enough tourists came to stare at the bridges and the people who built them, we might get enough money to pay for them.

Have a nice day.

You said it all Pal. And I will say it again the figure of 9000 vehicles crossing the Cameron Street bridge keeps growing and growing. At the count done in 2002 there were only 3500 vehicles that crossed the bridge and a very small portion of it was heavey trucks. I will leave it at that.

But I did forget to mention that engineers should stick with engineering and not mess with plitical problems that we have in this small City run by even smaller minds.

Cheers

"One of the first things I learned in one of my traffic engineering courses at university was that Canada has 32 million transportation engineers”

It seems that your educators failed to let you know that Canada also has a similar number of lawyers, doctors, environmental engineers, foresters, economists, architects, investment analysts, etc., etc.

The fact is that when one looks through the eyes of a traffic engineer, or any specialist for that matter, it is exactly that, the opinion of one specialty. Not only that, all too often it is also the opinion of one specialist since few will send the money to obtain a second opinion. You would think that medicine is medicine is medicine. And the same with traffic engineers. Not so, as we discover all too often.

There are many other opinions which have to come into play when planning a city and its present and future well being. If there is any profession where such more comprehensive planning occurs it is with urban planners, not traffic engineers.

As more and more people begin to realize as we move into the 21st century of a highly developed social infrastructure, the decision making which impacts those who live in this country is becoming more and more a participatory regime of decision making rather than an exclusionary one. Moving along the hierarchy of community size till we get to the smaller level of urban communities, that becomes more and more obvious.

Respected traffic engineers would understand that future planning is very much dependant of whether the future unfolds as predicted or whether new circumstances will dictate a different sequence of development. After all, for those who are engineers, as for those who are other planning professionals, they will know that the design and development process is an iterative one. Today that is also more frequently called continuous improvement area.

So, weezerfan, share with us your knowledge of traffic engineering which would counter those engineers who long ago mapped out a bypass with a route which has a direct connection from approximately the Sintich road area across the river to approximately the Haldi Rd.

The question is not has the population increased. We are talking about roads and vehicles using those roads, not only the numbers, but also the types of vehicles.

There is no doubt in my mind that the trucking traffic has substantially increased. That is for many reasons, one of them being the industrialized use of the roads.

Just looking at forestry iteslf shows a different utilization in 2006 than in 1996 than in 1986. The population has been virtually static over the 20 years, but the trucking has not been. Larger plants, wood moving in from further away, and even the finished product may have a larger percentage moving along the highways rather than rail.

So, move a little deeper into the anaysis whether the traffic is increasing and the origin-destination aspect of traffic is cahnging which results in more industrial traffic moving through the city which has neither origin nor destination in this city.

BTW, my take on the Cameron street bridge has been expressed many times. Fix the bridge to its previous standard one lane configuration and let the next 5 to 10 years tell us whether we need to make a large investment there or not.

Mr. Meisner thinks that the Cameron Street bridge is the "most pressing bridge" issue in town. The CEO of Canfor expressed that for his company alone the outage of the bridge means a loss of at least one hundred thousand bucks per year. FMC and the refinery have remained silent, but I have seen their trucks use the bridge all the time in the past, together with the vehicles of thousands of commuters.

There is also the issue of safety and additional fuel costs since it was closed off.

How do we calculate the cost of potential accidents and the degradation of quality of life for those residents who happen to be exposed to the detoured traffic?

Get the deck fixed for less than 3/4 of a million as was suggested the city traffic manager! Every other option, including a toll, is apparently unreasonable, not feasible, ignorant of the facts, politically incorrect, economically unaffordable, or, according to some - just amateur bleating.

>"On October 22-2005, now more than one year ago, Mayor Colin Kinsley identified that bridge as, in his view, a priority for the entire city."<

It had something to do with the election and as such apparently had as much weight as a hot air balloon.

I have the same amount of data as you owl on this problem, except for the traffic counts found on the city GIS. Flow Rates of roughly 2400 pcph. The maximum accepted flow rate for a 2 lane facility under optimal conditions is roughly 2800 passenger cars per hour. Optimal conditions being (12 ft lane widths, 6 ft of clearance on side of road, all passenger cars, 50/50 split in direction of traffic) These factors reduce this 2800 number to probably around 1900-2000 which is obviously less than the 2400 travelling there today. Simply travelling there today and waiting 20 min to get from one end of the BCR site to the other warrents it. I also doubt that a new 9km stretch of road that takes one out to Vanway would be much faster either. Should we plan for the parkridge parkway? Well... yes, we need the Right of Way to be aquired but I highly doubt at this point if it is worth the probably $50 million to do so.

And so it goes. I agree that there is more truck traffic through the City now than in the past, mainly because of the increased logging etc; , however the point we have to keep in mind here is this. Does in necessarily follow that an increase in traffic in the City means an increase in traffic on the Cameron St., bridge, 1st Avenue, and River Road. The short answer is no, it does not. The City wants you to beleive otherwise, but I repeat No, it does not.

The Industries located on River Road, 1st Avenue, and the East end of the City, and those located on the Pulp Mill road that use the Cameron St. bridge, are the same industries that have been located there for the past 40 years. There has been no increase in this traffic, and in fact it has been reduced substaintailly over the years. There has been no new industrie located in this area, and in fact the CN Rail has downsized.

Anyone who wanted to make an in depth traffic study of the actual heavy traffic that uses this bridge would find out very quickly that it hasnt changed over the years. Not all truck traffic from the Pulp Mills, River Road, and 1st Avenue use the Cameron St. bridge, in actual fact most of it goes South over the John Hart, some East to Mcbride etc; and some West on Hiway 16. and some North.

Main Industrial users of the Cameron St. Bridge are;
(1) Husky Oil to River Road and East on Hiway 16 10/15 Week
(2) FMC Corp to Hiway 16 East 8/10 per week
(3) The Pas Lumber Co., Lumber trucks from Bear Lake, Hog fuel to Canfor. 200 per week
(4) Brink Forest Prods. Chips and Hog Fuel to Canfor Pulp Mills. 50 a week maybe.
(5) Lakeland Mills Hog Fuel and Chips to Canfor Mills, and Logs off the Hart Hiway, North Nechako
100 per week.
(7) Imperial Oil Fuel trucks heading up the John Hart. 10/20 per week??
(8) Canfor Pulp mills. Truck loads for Edmonton and Calgary Alta, plus some miscellaneous trucks from Hiway 16 East. 30 per week at best.
(9) Other Industry on River Road, 1st Avenue like Interior Warehouse, Landtran Logistics, Beyers Transport,Papason Trucking, etc; 40 per week. (Maybe)

So in essence we are looking at approx 92 trucks per day based on a 5 day week. Based on a 16 hour day this would be approx 5 trucks per hour. On a 24 hour day it would be aprox 3 per hour. Hardly a case for a 21 Million dollar bridge, and therein lies the lie.

The 2002 study showed that there were about 100 heavey trucks per day and the remaining traffic of 3400 vehicles were cars and light trucks. The study by the way was on the Cities website. It was done by an engineering firm for the City. Your still on the money Pal.

Cheers

Pal: "The City wants you to beleive otherwise..."

Is there some kind of a plot? And, if there is one, what is it? Who would benefit financially from the bridge replacement project which according to some posts here may be totally unnecessary?

Isn't a volume of close to 4,000 vehicles per day enough justification to have a bridge there?

Diplomat. No plot in the real sense of the word, except that by building a new bridge you get some political benefit, and some contractors and engineers get some juicy contracts. There is no benefits for the City in terms of political mileage, and for Contractors if they repair the present bridge for $750,000.00.

4000 vehicles per day is not enough to warrant a new 21 Million bridge anywhere, especially if you can repair the one you have for 3/4 million with some repairs over the next 10 years.

The City is the one pushing for this bridge, and has been since the get go. They do not seem to care if people from the Pulp Mills, River Road, and Ist Avenue have to have their business disrupted for 3 years, nor do they seem to have a concern for the additional traffic that has to be re-routed over 5th/97 bypass.

So you have to ask yourself why is the City hell bent to spend 21 Million on a new bridge when they can repair the present one to facilitate the present traffic for 3/4 Million.

The rumour going around prior to the last Civic Election was that the Camerson St., Bridge would be replaced by a one way steel superstructure, built by a local contractor for a cost of approx 5/6 Million. If the City doesnt get the 15 Million from the Feds/Prov. it has already budgeted its share of the new bridge 7.5 Million, and therefore this money could be used for a steel superstructure/one way bridge. Was this the plan all along? Who knows?

My feeling is that there is very little, (in fact no) concern by the City to repair the bridge, and continue to use it for another 10 years and save us a pile of money, so the obvious question is, why?

Thanks, Pal! I am with you on the $750,000 dollar repair idea.

Frank Blues came up with this number and I do not understand why nobody is even considering this based-on-common-sense option.

After spending a whole bunch of additional money on the investigation of the viability of the piers a low-tech temporary fix like this one seems to be unacceptable to those who think big with our taxpayers' money.

It was announced by Kinsley some weeks ago that the bridge issue would be before council in November, 2006.

Unless he is travelling abroad and unable to attend we should get the nitty-gritty before the end of this month!

Should be interesting!

As a matter of fact he is travelling. I understand that he is in Paris France this week, however I expect that he will be back in time to attend a couple of meetings before Months end.