Tight squeeze

Feds want municipalities to share cost of replacing Murray Canal bridge.

Northumberland MP Rick Norlocksays municipalities will have to chip in if they want two lanes on the proposed replacement bridge across Murray Canal.

The haggling has begun. The federal government owns the steel bridge that crosses the MurrayCanal between Carrying Place and Brighton. Sixty seven winters of salt and snow have corroded the crossing and compromised its structural integrity. Restrictions have limited the capacity of the bridge, such that it can only offer legal passage to loads of seven tonnes or less.

The federal government, through Parks Canada, will replace the bridge, but only at its current width at an estimated cost of about $4.3 million. But at just over three metres wide, the bridge fails to meet the current standard for a two-lane bridge. To do this the new bridge must be at least 3.5 metres (about 10 feet) wider with a total price tag of about $8 million.

Parks Canada won’t pay for a wider bridge. So the federal agency proposes to put a traffic signal on either side of the bridge, limiting traffic to just one lane at a time.

Residents, businesses and local governments in Brighton, Quinte West and PrinceEdwardCounty are crying foul. Many feel the federal government should replace the bridge according to modern standards, without reducing traffic flow.

The council chambers of Quinte West were filled to capacity last Wednesday with anxious folks who had come to hear MP Rick Norlock defend the proposal.

Norlock said Parks Canada has too many infrastructure needs of its own. It won’t spend an additional $4 million to expand the bridge to meet the traffic requirements of municipal roadways.

Besides, he noted, quoting statistics from a consultant’s study, controlling traffic with a signal light was likely to add just over a minute to the average travel time across the bridge—assuming five swings of the bridge each hour to enable boats to go through.

“This is an acceptable level of service ,given the average volume of 2,200 vehicles each day in the summer,” said Norlock.

He said work had to begin soon or else the bridge risked being downgraded further or even potentially closed.

They said many more cars crossed each day than the 2,200 quoted by Norlock. The fatal blow to Norlock’s presentation came, however, when one resident observed that it takes 12 minutes for the bridge to complete a swing cycle—that five swings would consume an entire hour and that no traffic would be allowed across. As such, the average wait time would be much longer than that presented by the MP.

Earlier, the consultant had conceded that actual crossing volumes hadn’t been counted since 2008.

It was a fiasco. Norlock had come to put pressure on the municipalities to pay the balance of the cost to replace the existing bridge with one that would accommodate two-lane traffic and a pedestrian lane. He even proposed they make a joint application to the Build Canada Fund—a federal infrastructure funding program—to fund the balance. But now he was facing an angry mob, and the basic facts underlying his argument were wrong.

Everything was in doubt. How does the cost of constructing the bridge double from $4.3 to $8.3 million, simply by widening it by 10 feet?

Mayors from Brighton, Quinte West and Prince Edward County were in the audience—likely thrilled not to be sharing the front table with Norlock, the Parks Canada representative and their consultants.

Mayor Peter Mertens briefed his fellow councillors at a committee of the whole meeting.

He told his colleagues he would entertain a potential joint application to the Build Canada Fund only if he was assured that such a bid wouldn’t impact funding for County roads and bridges projects. Nor is he willing to match federal funds with a municipal contribution—as many such funding programs are structured.

“We have difficulty enough paying our own infrastructure needs,” said Mertens, “We are not going to fund the federal infrastructure too.”