Safety of bridge construction detour questioned

Farm equipment and commuters will be a bad mix during the replacement of the York Bridge north of Charlottetown, a public meeting heard Tuesday night.

• Details on $650K York Bridge replacement to be released

A meeting was held at the York Community Centre. Work to replace the bridge will start Sept. 6. The current bridge dates from the 1950s.

During the six- to eight-week construction project locals will need to take a detour of about 20 kilometers.

Time and safety

Krista Shaw of Stanhope said her son's daycare is just three houses away from the bridge, and she is concerned about how safe the detour will be, with the mix of traffic on it.

"The detour is going to add 25 kilometres each way to my day, morning and evening, and that's going to now be behind farm equipment, trying to harvest crops, along with the rest of the public in the area," said Shaw.

"This is going to greatly impact four farms in the area, two other businesses, traffic is going to be rerouted."

A bad time of year

Local farmer Rene Steijnsays having thisconstruction happening during the potato harvest season will be costly for him.

He said he doesn't have enough equipment to make up for the extra travel time involved.

"They will have to take that 20-plus-kilometre detour every single time, each way," said Steijn.

"I don't have enough equipment to handle that. I only have so many trucks. I have my fields, luckily, pretty close to my farm, I can usually handle it good with the equipment that I have available, but with this detour I have to double the capacity for transportation to make it even possible."

Steijn estimates he'll have an additional $20,000 to $30,000 in shipping costs.

Many residents at the meeting expressed disappointment that they weren't consulted earlier on the plans for the bridge and the timing of the construction.

Fire response routes rejigged

North Shore fire chief Jason Blackmanwishes he had been consulted earlier about the construction.

Blackman said helearned about the project late last week and had to scramble to arrange for other fire departments to answer calls in the York-Marshfield areabecause the detour could add eight to 12 minutes on the response time of his firefighters.

"We're doing everything within our power to to make sure they're properly covered to the best of our ability," he said.

Blackman said rearranging routes and making sure 911 dispatchers know about the changes takes a bit of time and he would have appreciated a little more notice.

Change of date possible

A provincial official at the meeting said the project was already moved earlier than initially planned so work hopefully won't be happening at the height of the harvest.

The bridge could be done as early as Oct. 21.

It's a necessary evil.- bridge engineer Neil Lawless

Bridge engineer Neil Lawless said he will take the concerns he heard back to his department, includingwhether a change in timing could be accommodated. He saidthe financial impact of delaying the project would have to beweighedgiven that a contractor has already been selected to do the work.

"We try our best to minimize that impact in terms of the timing of the project," he said.

"It's kind of the nature of the beast. It's a necessary evil."

Lawless said decisions are made withinthe department basedon the best interests as a whole in terms of impact on residents, the environment and the bill for taxpayers. In this case, that includes a detour.

He said any possible changes to the timing of the project should be decided by the end of the week.

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