Minor damage to overpass after semi crash on Highway 1
Posted June 12, 2018 10:23 am.
Last Updated June 12, 2018 12:35 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
LANGLEY (NEWS 1130) – The commute home through Langley likely won’t be slowed down this evening, after a semi hit the overpass at Glover Road on Highway 1 this morning.
Damage to the overpass is minor and the bridge will need minor concrete repairs, which will be done overnight this week, according to the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
The collision caused major delays in both directions during the morning rush, and it’s something that’s happened before.
Back in December, another semi hit and shut down the 152nd Street overpass over Highway 99 in Surrey. The closure caused major headaches for drivers and required extensive costly repairs. Last July, a dump truck destroyed a pedestrian overpass in Burnaby while a truck carrying a crane hit a train overpass in Coquitlam in August.
Despite the recent collisions, BC Trucking President Dave Earle says they aren’t becoming more common, even though that may be the perception.
“Certainly these things happen. Neither we nor our members want them to happen and certainly the drivers don’t want them to happen, so it will be a learning situation,” he said.
He says oversized loads have to follow predetermined routes to avoid situations like this.
“A lot of the oversized cargo that is in place has to go through a very significant, rigorous process to be approved to move on highways and local roads throughout British Columbia,” Earle said.
But he admits ultimately it’s up to the driver to measure their load and “to understand and know exactly the dimensions of the load that they are hauling as well as the contents of the load that they are hauling.”
Const. Mike Halskov with RCMP Traffic Services says while collisions may not be up, they likely won’t ever be completely eliminated.
“We may encounter this from time to time because we’re dealing with the human factor and people are in a hurry, they’re failing to check and they’re making mistakes,” he said. “It’s a fairly rare occurrence when you consider the volume of trucks that are traveling our roadways in the Lower Mainland.”
