THUNDER BAY – City council has voted to kill what was considered Thunder Bay’s top cycling infrastructure priority. The planned Carrick/Vickers bridge was to provide a safe link between the city’s north and south sides for cyclists and pedestrians. The decision, made at a Tuesday night meeting to review the 2020 municipal budget, comes after estimated construction costs for the bridge jumped significantly.
The north-south cycling link, identified by the city as a top active transportation priority since 2008, is unlikely to be revived in the near future. That’s because $800,000 in provincial funding that was to be used for the bridge expires this year. The money came from a program since cancelled by the Ford government, along with the cap-and-trade carbon pricing policy that funded it. City administration say that money will now be spent on other active transportation projects.
“I’m really disappointed,” Shelby Ch’ng told her council colleagues. “This bridge will never get built, if we don’t do it now. We’re not going to get another $800,000 pot for active transportation, I think, in our lifetime.”
Ch’ng and Andrew Foulds were the only councillors who voted to fund the project.
Cost estimates for the bridge recently jumped from $1.6 million to $2.4 million due to engineering challenges. The proposed bridge would have crossed the Neebing/McIntyre floodway just West of May Street. The city says soft soils in the area would have required placing foundations deep into bedrock, which could disrupt nearby sewer lines.
Work to monitor and reinforce those lines bumped total costs by around $800,000. City administration suggested deferring spending on a handful of road work and lighting projects, as well as dipping into wastewater program funds, to make up the difference. But most councillors rejected that idea.
“We would be widening our infrastructure gap significantly” by putting off those other infrastructure projects, said Coun. Cody Fraser. “So I can’t support this, unfortunately, because I think it’s such a great project.”
Coun. Mark Bentz painted a grim picture of the city’s finances, saying council can’t afford to keep building new infrastructure.
“This is another bridge we’re building – we can’t even pay for the bridges we own,” he said.
Bentz was also skeptical of the importance of the project, calling it a “nice-to-have” rather than a necessity.
“Balmoral is not that far away from Carrick,” he said “When I’m on a bike, that little diversion is not going to take that long. It’s not the end of the world.”
