County revisiting local bridge restrictions

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Wheatland County council is revisiting current bridge restrictions throughout the county, seeking to identify problems, upgrade options, and areas to increase load capacities. 

Earlier this year, county administration was directed to complete a comprehensive review of the county’s Restricted Bridge List under the advisement of a bridge inspector. 

Prior to this, a review had not been conducted for several years. In 2020, the Province of Alberta made changes to the legal allowable load rating for local roads. This was cause for a review of the county’s infrastructure to be considered overdue. 

At the time of the review, a total of 32 bridges within the county were identified as being on the restricted list. 

The inspection resulted in a recommendation to remove nine bridges from the list either due to having been replaced with a new structure, replaced with large culverts, or having been removed entirely without replacement.

One bridge was recommended to have its weight restrictions reduced, and 12 were recommended to be added to the list.

The bridges which were recommended to be added to the restrictions list were noted to have effective service lives less than half their original ratings remaining. 

The majority of the bridges added to the restricted list were 54 tonnes on the “B-Train” (Super B) classification.

Coun. Glenn Koester expressed concerns regarding several of the bridge restrictions, noting that it would affect the ability of local farmers to have harvest loads transported efficiently. 

“It affects just about every farmer out there. Harvest is coming. If they don’t have a Super B, they haul grain and they hire a Super B. Rates are going to go up across the board just because … we did a blanket coverage of 54 ton on all the bridges that was never even measured,” he said.

Cody Zimmerman, manager of operations, explained given the age and condition of many of the bridges within the county, any further investigation or assessment is likely to result in even greater restrictions on county infrastructure.

He added in order to prevent potential liability to the county, the recommendation is to systematically address the aging bridges and maintain the restrictions until local infrastructure is updated.

“There is short term pain here, being that you won’t be able to haul a full load over every bridge,” said Zimmerman. “You have to haul nine tonnes less than a full load, and understanding that there is cost to the ratepayers and the produces, and everybody in that you might have to go around a few more miles and that will add time on to your hauling and fuel costs.

“We are looking at which bridges we should be prioritizing and what is going to have the greatest impact to the network and the most amount of ratepayers to keep operating normally.”

He explained that the county has an obligation to address its infrastructure and mitigate risk of eventual bridge failure to protect both themselves, as well as those who utilize the roads.

The drafted budget presented in the report to council aims to replace 71 per cent of the bridges currently on the restricted list within the next six years.