Does the city want to share their main through roads with 5 chip trucks a minute?

IMO a bridge is needed connecting the edge of Cottenwood Park with the back side of the CANFOR Corporate offices. This could be used by all truck haulers through the city of PG if it was connected the the Northwood Pulp Mill road and designated for heavy traffic and dangerous goods.

Although not as much of a short cut as the current proposal it would directly connect the downtown to the 5000 employees of the industrial area, and also be equal in commute to the 5th Avenue option when going to the Hart.

I also think the current bridge should stay as is to be part of a community trail system.

I agree this bridge should be mothballed to be used for the trail system. Maintenance would be considerably less costly with the reduced structural stress on the bridge.

The long range plan for the transportation network in PG includes a bridge at the Cottonwood Park location, similar to what you mentioned.

Now we have another traffic study about to be started to, in addition to looking on how the grid affects traffic to the downtown, also look at the last 33 studies (unbelievable!!!!! and very sad).

Consultants must see this City as a cash cow!!

http://www.city.pg.bc.ca/city_services/supply/2005_documents/P05-18.pdf

I just read that proposal for content

I see Ken Craig is one of 6 key people at City Hall the consultant must interview to collect data about downtown traffic damand. It appears that writing parking tickets will be an important part of this study.

I also see that the projection is to be to 2025. Typically projections are done to population thresholds, such as 90,000, 100,000, 120,00, etc. There were projections in some of the studies in the mid 60's to mid 70's to take this city to a population of 150,000 plus by 2000 as I recall, maybe even higher. It is far too difficult to project the size of a city such as Prince George into 2025. It could be no bigger than now.

The other thing which is missing is any information about the location of existing offices, light manufacturing, and retail + services throughout the City, especially vacancy rates to see what population the existing infrastructure is good for.

It looks like the key city staff who are going to be consulted really have not done their homework on putting the proposal together, assuming they were the ones consulted for that. Hopefully the consultants will know better.

It is absolutely ridiculous that another bridge be built across the Necheko within a kilometer or two from the John Hart bridge. This is small town thinking. If we have to spend 20 million bucks to support the down town area we have a big problem. If the Manderins at City Hall cant resolve the down town problen then fire them and get someone that can. We have many layers of business development people what are they doing to help the down town area?
As for the truckers they will have to realize there are other routs across the Necheko River and someone should show them where they are.
This is not sex were both parties have to be fulfilled this is about runing a City efficiently

The key to me is to ensure we have the trucks off central street and downtown in the future when the city growth requires this (near future), and the fact that it should be a provincial capital expenditure and not a city capital expenditure because it involves dangerous goods and in most cases trucker traffic from across the north accessing our pulp mills.

Ideally if we thought about this I would think the big picture is more important then the convienience of the politicians and wealthy residents of North Nechako.

I think all industrial traffic should have designated routes that save time and money for industry while providing safety for the community.

BCR traffic should be routed through the old cariboo highway down the highway #16 Fraser crossing and then across a Cottenwood Nechako crossing to the pulp mills and oil refinery FMC ect. From the pulp mill side traffic should be routed through the PG saw mill direction to Salmon Vally capturing the mill traffic from Bear Lake and Mackenzie, and from Salmon Valley it should be route South West to Cheif Lake Road and down to a new Mud River crossing connecting back to Highway #16 West. In addition to that a crossing should be put into the BCR site to College Hights completing the loop for the most efficient and safest transportation network.

The cost for three needed crossings two lane crossings, and an additional 100 km of highway would likely cost $150 Million. Our mills pay that in taxes in less then a single year.

The region should demand no less IMO and Pat Bell and Shirely Bond, and the other guy shouldn't have to be asked to make this happen. Pat Bell being a trucker should know better, and should not use the Lower Mainland needs infrastructure too excuse not to support his local economy.

Time Will Tell

The proposal to have an outer ring road around Prince George for through traffic, especially industrial traffic has been around for at least thirty years. I agree with Chadermando that this is needed and that it is primarily a provincial cost.

As with many cities, bypasses intended for long distance traffic soon become main arterials in a growing city. Waterways were traditional methods of transporting goods over long distances and still are, other than in locations such as Prince George on fast moving rivers disconnected from other navigable waters. Railways took care of that, eventually. Then roads came to be used for major freight transportation systems as well. Roads which were not traditionally built for that purpose.

It is imperative that heavy freight traffic, as opposed to local goods distribution traffic, be segregated from passenger traffic as frequently as possible to reduce accidents. The number of trucking accidents is right now under review by ICBC, WCB and the various industries using trucks. I am relatively sure that there will be money freed up to improve road networks to make them safer, and Prince George is included since we have a high percentage of trucking traffic compared to passenger vehicles traffic on our main arterials.

That being said, how long will it take? It's government. Don't hold your breath.

Owl IMO it comes down to one simple question.

Do we want PG to become a central transportation hub of the North realizing its full benefit of location and the new container port in Prince Rupert,

or,

on the other hand do we want Prince Georg to be the Burns Lake of the North catering to a 5 minute commute for North Nechako residents at the expense of transportation hub of the North for PG?

One look at Burns Lake should scare us silly when we look at what that model does for the economy.

Clearly this is a provincial issue as well as federal when one looks at the impact on the Northern Alberta, and territory economies via the transportation corridor.

I say it costs $150 Million of which PG should pay no more than $20 million with the rest comming from the provincial and federal governments equally. Ideally it wold involve moving the scales out of town as well freeing up traffic congestion that the scales currently create.