Has the time for a truck bypass arrived?

With the container port start up on the horizon, a long discussed road has once again had the blue prints dusted off. The need for a downtown bypass road has been brought up again, with the desire to keep the heavier loads out of the downtown core, with their own dedicated route to the Fairview area of town.

The idea first came up back in the 1970's and occasionally resurfaces whenever the topic of growth comes up around the city. With little in the way of residential or industrial use along the Wantage road area leading towards the west side of the city, the time to plan for a heavy use road not taking traffic into the business and residential areas is once again nigh.

The Daily News featured the development on the front page of Friday's Daily News.

BUILD A BYPASS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE, COUNCIL IS URGED
By James Vassallo
The Daily news
Friday, December 1, 2006
Page one

The city is considering resurrecting an idea from the 1970s that would halt the flow of truck traffic through the downtown core. The idea of a Wantage Road bypass, floated when visits from lumber trucks were a regular occurrence, received support form all members of council after the issue was brought up by a local resident.

“A few years ago, when we had lumber trucks rolling down McBride -Second Avenue the interest in building a road was there, then the lumber traffic stopped and so did the interest of building a truck bypass,” wrote Charles Pike in a letter to council.

“The time has come again, only this time it must be seen through.”

Pike, a former truck-driver, said the issue is more important than ever because of the port development.

“Port officials at first said there would be no truck traffic, which I find hard to believe considering the fact we are building a world-class port facility,” he wrote. “Then, they changed their minds and said only two per cent of the containers would arrive on trucks. Well, two per cent of that many containers is still a lot of trucks besides the other truck traffic that is going there.”

Two per cent of the 500,000 average size containers expected by the fall of 2007 would represent 10,000 container loads trucked out a year. Assuming a 40-plus foot truck can take two 20 foot containers (TEU) this would represent 14 trucks running through downtown per day. In addition additional trucks would be needed for particularly heavy, large or specialized items. If the numbers held, nearly 60 trucks would travel down Second Avenue each day in 2010 following the completion of the two million TEU-capacity phase two portion of the port.
“Nobody wants to see a truck roll over on Second Avenue or anywhere else for that matter.”

“We have more trucks rolling through town than we’ve ever had and as construction progresses, it will only get worst,” wrote Pike.

“Even if the road is built around from Ridley Island sometime in the future this road will still be needed and, ladies and gentleman, this is the future of our fair city.

“It would be very short-sighted on our part not to do this right now, also bear in mind this will create some sorely needed well paying construction jobs.”

The idea prompted council to instruct municipal staff to contact ICBC and the Ministry of Highways to see if a use study could be conducted. They also asked staff to find out what sort of traffic levels would have to occur before the province would step in and fund a bypass.