There was traffic gridlock in West Quesnel on Saturday as motorists at one point were stalled several blocks back all the way back past the Soccer complex.
A paving project on both sides of the bridge was the culprit.
City Manager Byron Johnson says the public made them well aware of the problem…
“The traffic was very bad, the wait times were painfully long, we understand that. So we’re looking at doing a debrief of kind of what went wrong, some of it is a bit out of our control. Planning and paving is interesting because the paving season is very short, the weather has to cooperate and the paving contractor is only in town for a very limited number of days.”
That said, Johnson says there are some things they may be able to do better, including having more traffic control.
“We use a traffic control contract, hired by the paver. They submit a plan to the Ministry and then gets those approved and then we go with that. When it’s a major connector route maybe we need to be more engaged and if we think we need more traffic control folks then we need to state that. It will cost more money but i think in this case it would have helped.”
Johnson says doing certain projects during slower times could also help.
He says in this case the company did eventually go to another project before coming back and finishing it off at a slower time of the day on Sunday.