TNRD Board of Directors approved letter of support restricting truck traffic on Hwy 5A

Photo: Castanet Staff

The Thompson Nicola Regional District board of directors have voted in favour of writing a letter of support for restricting commercial traffic on Highway 5A.

The decision was made in a board meeting Thursday, following presentations made in previous meetings by Bob Price, spokesperson for Stump Lake Ranch, the Ministry of Transportation, and the Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement.

Director Mel Rothenburger had moved write the letter of support at the March board of directors meeting, but the motion was deferred to give directors more time to read over statistics presented by the ministry.

“To say that Highway 5A and the Coquihalla are equally safe for commercial truck traffic really doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Rothenburger said in Thursday’s meeting.

“There’s a lot to be said for the idea of designating that highway to ban commercial truck traffic and making arrangements, of course, for local truck traffic to continue. Common sense says those trucks should be kept off of highway 5A and kept to the Coquihalla.”

Director Linda Brown, mayor of the City of Merritt, said she wouldn’t be voting for the motion, as any actions taken should be targeting the bad drivers, not all drivers.

Brown said B.C. government’s new mandatory entry level training program for commercial truck drivers — to be implemented in June — was a good start.

“Not all drivers fit the bill of driving too fast, driving dangerously,” Brown said.

“These are public roads, paid by taxpayer dollars. They aren’t meant to be private roads just for the people that live on them.”

Director Barbara Roden said the new training will not cover the vast majority of drivers on the road, only new drivers.

Roden said Highway 5A was not designed to accommodate the long lengths of modern commercial vehicles.

“I realize there’s a lot of older highways that were not designed for these super trucks, but accommodations have been made when those are the only route available. That is not the case with Highway 5A,” Roden said.

“It is not in the middle of nowhere where trucks have absolutely no other options. There’s a modern superhighway, designed precisely with these trucks in mind, a couple of kilometres away. I see absolutely no reason why truckers cannot be using the Coquihalla instead of Highway 5A.

The motion passed, with directors Ronaye Elliott, Stephen Quinn, Linda Brown, Santo Talarico, and Board Chair Ken Gillis opposed.