INSIDE: City sets up ‘task force’ to help develop downtown core Pg. 7 August 20, 2010
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brings big voice to Bard 24 Soprano 1985-
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LOCAL NEWS, SPORTS, WEATHER & ENTERTAINMENT chilliwacktimes.com
Transit activist told her idea not realistic BY CORNELIA NAYLOR cnaylor@chilliwacktimes.com
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place in the afternoon. In that incident, a westbound truck caught the shoulder of the bridge, lost control and jackknifed. A second transport truck clipped the truck and, in order to miss a stopped car, hit the rail and ended up in the canal. RCMP Staff Sgt. Jim Simmill said police are still investigating the crash and will look at similarities it may
fter a three hour and four minute round trip on Chilliwack’s public transit system to travel the six kilometres from her home to city hall, it only took 10 minutes for city engineers to put the kibosh on Jennifer Bigham’s transit plan. “Apparently my plan is good in theory but won’t hold up in reality,” said the self-styled “Chilliwack-ivist” in a press release this week. “The reason cited is that the city doesn’t have enough buses to support the format proposed, and that they don’t care to afford the lease or pay the operating costs on any more buses at this time.” The 26-year-old local mass transit activist’s $5 million plan to revamp the Chilliwack public transit system was born out of a survey of 500 transit users and about 200 hours of unpaid volunteer labour. She was invited to discuss it with city staff this week after presenting it to the city’s transit advisory committee last week, but during the meeting (with manager of transportation and drainage Rod Sanderson) she was told that her ideas were “old news” and that the city had already looked into similar changes. “I wish someone could have spared the 10 minutes a few months ago to lay it on the table for me so I didn’t have to take the time and effort to reinvent the wheel,” she said. To make the city’s bus system more user friendly, Bigham advocates moving the main bus interchange from the downtown core to the two malls just south of the
See TRUCKER, Page 21
See TRANSIT, Page 21
Tyler Olsen/TIMES
Mounties survey the spot where a transport truck crashed into the Vedder Canal early Tuesday morning.
Truck plunges over bridge BY TYLER OLSEN tolsen@chilliwacktimes.com
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Chilliwack man is dead after his transport truck crashed off the Vedder Canal bridge and into the water below early Tuesday morning. The accident happened around 2 a.m. and shut down westbound highway traffic for hours Tuesday. The driver was Gregory Douglas Wright, 54. A cause of death has not yet been released. While police say they won’t know for months why the truck crashed, the incident has sparked debate about a bridge that
54-year-old Gregory Wright dies crossing Vedder bridge that has seen its fair share of accidents
through the guard rails and plunged has seen its share of accidents. The stretch of road between the into the canal around 4 a.m. on a November morning. The Yale Road interchange and bridge deck was wet, but the turn just west of the not frozen, and police bridge frequently sees accibelieved fatigue may have dents. The bridge is especialbeen a factor. ly notorious, and has seen two other westbound transEB IRST And in December of port trucks go into the water First reported on 2008, another truck crashed chilliwacktimes.com through a guard rail and over the past four years. into the canal. The driver In 2006 Jartinder Singh Bath died when his rig crashed wasn’t hurt in the crash, which took
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