Commercial truck traffic on the Pattullo Bridge has got to be stopped – forever.
This is a small, aging infrastructure built in 1937 that will not last with the small fixes they currently do for upkeep. These large vehicles tear apart the bridge with their length and heavy weight. Several times a day, 70-foot-long semis travel over this bridge, causing further damage and being nothing more than a clog in the wheel by taking two lanes to travel over the bridge and becoming a nuisance for New Westminster residential traffic.
Worse yet, these semis break down due to a lack of upkeep on the trucks, blocking a lane for hours.
Now that this bridge is going to be reduced to one-lane traffic each way during repairs this spring, commercial trucks need to be outright banned from using this bridge altogether – not only during repairs, but afterwards also.
The mayors of both New Westminster and Surrey need to ensure this ban is permanent. The Pattullo should be designated to small vehicle traffic only like the Lions Gate Bridge, which, too, was built in 1937 and is a non-truck route.
Edward Degenstien
Sandra Steffan
Newton