With two rocks in hand, a local man stormed into Timmins council chambers, interrupting the tail end of an Ontario Power Generation (OPG) presentation.
He angrily told council that the large rocks are what residents on Carrigan Road are dealing with.
“How many tires did this take out? How many people receive this in their windshield? Can you imagine this [flying] at your kid's head? That’s what I’m talking about,” he shouted before exiting the room, leaving the rocks on the table next to the presenters.
Hoping to hear an update on the options for the Hoyle bridge, he's one of the dozens of residents who made the trip to city hall this week to show their frustration over its closure and ensuing safety concerns on Carrigan Road. The man with the rocks had left earlier when now Mayor Kristin Murray said people would be asked to leave if there were further outbursts from the audience. But he returned during the OPG presentation with the rocks to make his point.
At the meeting, council directed city staff to focus on the replacement of the two-lane bridge as the preferred solution for the closed Hoyle bridge. Staff has also been told to do a safety assessment of the Highway 101 and Carrigan Road intersection.
The estimated cost to replace the bridge is $4 to $4.7 million. The design phase could start this fall, with construction in 2023-24.
OPG's request to allow over 1,000 heavy truck loads and 10,000 light vehicle trips on Carrigan Road and Ice Chest Road from June 2023 to April 2025 has been deferred. The trips are to allow for a rehabilitation project at OPG's Frederick House River Dam.
Residents' frustrations have been brewing since November last year when the city indefinitely closed the bridge that crosses Porcupine River on Frederick House Lake Road.
There is now only one crossing over the river in that area and traffic has been rerouted down Carrigan Road, where there have been concerns about safety and flooding.
There were no public meetings prior to the closure and while meetings had been promised throughout the winter, the first public meeting was held in July. It was attended by Associated Engineering staff, one city staffer—who at the time had only been with the city about three months—and the ward councillor.
Over 100 people packed into the Hoyle Community Centre for the one-on-one information session that turned into a heated group discussion where residents drove home concerns about emergency access, safety issues and the city's communication with affected residents.
SEE: People drive home safety concerns after Hoyle bridge closure
At that meeting, residents were promised an update on the options for this bridge this month.
The item on the Aug. 9 council agenda was a deputation from engineering manager Glen Macdonald that heavily focused on upgrading Carrigan Road as a permanent detour. The results of a public survey included in the delegation showed that 96 per cent of the 72 people to answer the one-question survey favoured replacing the two-lane bridge.
Coun. John Curley, who was at the Hoyle public meeting, is disappointed with the deputation.
He noted the reason residents were in attendance was that they were promised that council would make a decision at this week's meeting
"Hence, everybody is here and all we have is a little bit of stuff that was through the survey and the people that were there. That doesn’t help the people that are here because they were told to be here and their voices should be heard, but not at a public meeting the way this is being done tonight,” he said.
Curley said the only reasonable solution is to put in a new bridge.
“We don’t have to dream up anything. We don’t have to come up with inspections, we don’t have to do nothing, just direct administration to go in this direction,” he said.
He highlighted the safety aspect.
If there was a crash at or closure of the Porcupine River bridge on Highway 101, the only detour is hours out of the way by backtracking to Highway 655 and heading to Timmins via Cochrane. If there was an emergency east of that, he said the city would have to rely on the Matheson fire department. There is a small volunteer fire department in Connaught, however, they work full-time jobs and could be on the wrong side of the closure.
“We’re not going to put our residents at risk for this kind of dollars when it’s going to cost us that much to do … another road, which doesn’t help the emergency aspect of this road,” said Curley.
