Truckers miffed by Winnipeg route closure

WINNIPEG — The closure of a popular east side route to trucks following a $5 million upgrade has angered truckers in Manitoba’s capital city.

According to the Manitoba Trucking Association, the City of Winnipeg has spent a total of $10 million during the last two years developing Plessis Road as a double divided regional street and truck route.

Grassie Boulevard between Lagimodiere Boulevard and Plessis is now also off-limits to large trucks.

“To spend that amount of money on a street and then re-designate to a non-truck route street is a complete waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” Bob Dolyniuk, general manager of the MTA, said back in March.

But that’s exactly what the city did and some drivers say it happened without fair warning.

Brett Smith, a pump operator for a cement firm, told The Winnipeg Sun about the route closure and noted that one of his colleagues only found out about the route change when a police officer pulled him over on Plessis and issued a warning.

Councilor Russ Wyatt — who put forward the re-designation proposal — said truck drivers must be "blind or deaf" to not have known that their access to Plessis was ending. Wyatt told media the change was finalized in city council back in March, following a "very transparent process."

He also claims that the road was not widened to accommodate commercial trucks, but to "facilitate residential development," and "add to the tax base of the city."

Now that Plessis is no longer a truck route, the closest legal option for commercial drivers is the two-lane Day Street.

We’re betting City Hall will soon get more than a few phone calls from "the tax base" along Day St. and Pandora Ave.

Meanwhile, when one road closes, another opens. Highways 75, the province’s main artery to the U.S. has emerged from flood waters and open to traffic once again. 

Not all lanes are open at the Morris River Bridge, however.

The six-week closure of the main trade thoroughfare has cost the regional trucking industry close to $1 billion, according to the MTA. 

While admitting there are some challenges with the proposal, Bob Dolyniuk says the province should raise Hwy. 75 to keep it above flood waters. Other options Dolyniuk says other options include re-routing traffic around the west side of Morris and upgrading Highway 59 so that it can be used as an alternate truck route, he said.