Quesnel has been successful in getting a Bike BC grant.
Mayor Bob Simpson says they have received 223 thousand dollars to help pay for what’s called a friction path across the Johnston Bridge…
“It’s a narrow lane, about a foot and a half on each of the road lanes, that the cyclists and motor cyclists can run their tires along and they get a good friction surface that makes it safer.”
The total cost of the project is actually in the half million dollar range and Simpson says the rest will come from Federal gas tax funds.
He says a safe crossing over the Quesnel River was identified two years ago as a priority for residents during consultation on the City’s active transportation study…
“People felt that the Quesnel River Bridge on the Highway is unsafe. You get real unsafe pedestrian-cycling interactions if they use the sidewalk there and if they go on the road it’s a very narrow pinch point on the highway, so that crossing is really not safe until we get that bridge replaced. So the other option is the Johnston Bridge, which is wide enough, the traffic isn’t as busy, but the metal surface of that bridge is pretty sketchy for not just cyclists but also for motorcyclists as well.”
Simpson says the work won’t begin until the spring as they first have to wait for an assessment for the logging sector to be completed on both the Johnston and Moffat bridges.