Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Victoria eases off on under-bridge barge speed limits

Marine traffic will not be required to slow down when travelling under the new Johnson Street Bridge, city councillors were told Thursday. “Industry can operate as industry has always operated.

Marine traffic will not be required to slow down when travelling under the new Johnson Street Bridge, city councillors were told Thursday.

“Industry can operate as industry has always operated. We’re building a bridge and that’s not going to impede industry,” Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said Thursday after council received a quarterly update on the Johnson Street Bridge project.

In January, Paul Hilder, Seaspan Marine vice-president of marine operations, wrote to the city in January expressing “serious concern” about proposed lower speeds for barge traffic under the bridge, saying that could pose added risk.

Seaspan Marine operates a fleet of barges, providing services such as escorting ships.

The letter said a city proposal to limit speeds to 3.5 knots for loaded barges and 4.5 knots for empty barges does not account for the discretion of experienced tugboat masters “to transit at variable speed required to safely control the tow.”

The decision to leave old bridge abutments in place will mean vessels have to travel farther and could also create risk. “This doubling of the transit distance in combination with the speed limits proposed undermines safety, rather than enhances it,” Hilder said.

If no changes are made, the company “will have to curtail barge service to businesses above the bridge and cease performing bridge assists to other operators,” Hilder said in the letter.

Jonathan Huggett, director of the bridge replacement project, has been consulting with Seaspan. In his update to councillors, he said it is the city’s responsibility to take every prudent step to properly design and install appropriate fendering. He said that is being done.

Seaspan is a reputable company that has a responsibility not to hit the bridge, he added.

In-channel fendering, which will protect the bridge from contact with vessels, has been installed. Existing bridge piers on the south side of the new bridge will remain and be skinned with wood strips to act as fenders for in-bound vessels, Huggett explained.

However, fenders to protect the new bridge piers from outbound vessels still have to be designed and aren’t included in the current project budget, Huggett said.

He said if the old bridge piers were removed, they would just have to be replaced with something else.

The contractor had included a figure of about $1.6 million for all of the fendering work, Huggett said. They were told in March 2014 to proceed with the fendering, but design of the north side fendering was not done.

“When I took over this project [in July 2014] … I began to realize there wasn’t any money for north side fendering and nobody had really given much thought to what was going to be built there,” Huggett said.

Installing the north side fendering will be complex as bridge construction will be occurring at the time. A Telus duct runs atop the seabed where fendering has to be installed.

Huggett would not speculate on the cost of the north side fendering.

Meanwhile, steel for the bridge is expected to be shipped to Victoria starting the end of May and arriving in early July.

The bridge is scheduled to open to vehicles by Dec. 31, with the project due for completion in March 2018 at a final cost of $105 million. At the time the bridge project was approved in 2009, it had an estimated cost of $63 million and a completion date of Sept. 30, 2015.

bcleverley@timescolonist.com