The Diefenbaker Bridge is the only access point to Prince Albert for people north of the city. (file photo/paNOW Staff)

By Susan McNeil

Bridge work

City plans to keep bridge free of work during business day

Jun 18, 2024 | 11:45 AM

The City of Prince Albert is doing its best to keep unnecessary work from being done on the Diefenbaker Bridge from Monday to Friday and during the day.

On Monday evening, council passed a motion in favour of limiting maintenance work, such as washing the salt off every spring, when the highest number of people will be using the bridge.

“What happened is a couple of weeks ago for some reason, our public works department decided to clean the bridge during prime time, so it backed the traffic all the way back up to the RCMP. Well, that’s totally ridiculous,” said Mayor Greg Dionne.

It was brought up at the last meeting after multiple complaints by drivers who couldn’t cross the city’s only bridge while travelling for work or to attend appointments.

While city crews do smaller maintenance jobs such as washing the salt off the bridge deck every spring, it is the provincial department of highways that does larger repairs.

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Unless it’s an emergency, said Dionne, neither the province nor city work crews should restrict traffic during peak travel times in the morning and in the late afternoon.

“All you do is stay away from that bridge from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and then 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.,” said Dionne.

A report prepared by public works advises the restrictions could be limited to between May 1 and October 1.

Most regular maintenance doesn’t lead to significant delays, except one job: washing it.

This is contracted out and has been for the last 10 years.

Normally, crews use pressure washers which means a truck pulling a trailer mounted washer and a tank that take up one lane while working. This is particularly a problem for traffic coming from the north.

For next year, public works said it is considering using a water truck with spray nozzles and a high-volume hose.

“Switching from a high pressure wash to a high volume should realize a number of benefits to the maintenance of the bridge. With the concrete reaching over a decade of service, a lower pressure wash will reduce the risk of flaking off concrete from the surface and the higher volume of water will be able to draw more salt off the concrete,” read the document from Public Works.

Maintenance workers will also be able to get off the bridge more quickly if traffic picks up.

The report warned council that restricting work hours could potentially open up the city to liability if an issue is reported and staff must wait until a non-peak time to fix it.

As well, the current collective bargaining agreement with outside workers has specific shift times written into it that might not work with the bridge schedule.

Rather than specifying times, public works suggested it would be better to be flexible and adapt to traffic conditions as they occur.

Work done on the bridge every year includes, washing barriers, sidewalks and the median, street sweeping, filling potholes, maintaining expansion joints, fixing the abutments and barricades, removing garbage and debris, repairing the cloverleaf, line marking and painting and piloting oversized loads that require the bridge to be shut down while they cross.

The motion from council is to limit interruptions from May to the end of October and to develop some alternatives that don’t involve restricting traffic.

READ MORE: A life-span study of the bridge was started in 2016

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com