How a small road bump shut down part of Vancouver

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Getting around Vancouver can be a tricky business.

The third-biggest city in the country, Vancouver is hemmed in by ocean and mountains and features a road network defined by water, including the Fraser River and Burrard Inlet.

But it wasn't a road closure or bridge collapse that caused traffic headaches last week. It was a bump: a 4.5-centimetre-high metal plate installed across three lanes of the south end of the Lions Gate Bridge to allow crews to conduct routine maintenance on one of the expansion joints in the elegant, 77-year-old structure.

The bump led to massive traffic tie-ups and up to two-hour delays that prompted many commuters to skip going to work altogether. And, temporarily, public-transportation buses opted not to travel over the bridge, meaning further delays as people were diverted to other routes.

Installed Aug. 14, the bump initially went unnoticed as one of hundreds of temporary tweaks to B.C.'s roads and highways. Within days, the bump had grown – in reputation if not in size – becoming the subject of traffic reports and its own Twitter account, which featured a smiley face and messages such as "so many traffic choppers in the sky overhead! it really gives the North Shore a beautiful background ambience."

Even in a city sometimes mocked by its more wintry Canadian counterparts for its – and its drivers' – inability to cope with more than a dusting of snow, the outsized disruption caused by a small-sized bump came as a nasty surprise.

(It was smaller than a speed bump, which are typically three to four inches high.) It also brought renewed attention to the challenges of travelling in the region, where residents in July voted against a sales-tax hike that would have helped pay for a $7.5-billion transit plan. Lineups snaked across the bridge and hundreds of commuters were affected when TransLink, Metro Vancouver's regional transportation authority, pulled several buses off their routes after bump-related delays put them more than an hour behind schedule.

With the city's transportation system brought down by a bump, residents turned to mockery. "I think the appeal of the account and its sudden popularity was the ridiculousness of the whole situation," said Marcus Timms, who works at a North Vancouver travel agency and started the @lionsgatebump Twitter account after a drive that typically takes him 15 minutes turned into a two-hour ordeal.

"One small bump, caused by roadworks to a decaying bridge, causing traffic mayhem across the city," Mr. Timms wrote in an e-mail. "The people of Vancouver (the North Shore in particular) have had to deal with situations like this for far too long with regard to our transportation infrastructure. There is no plan for the future and with development occurring at break-neck speed in the area, it's only going to get worse."

It turned out the bump, designed to allow drivers to pass overhead while crews worked below, was slightly higher than a version that had been used with no major problems about eight months ago to conduct similar work at the north end of the bridge. Drivers, rather than rolling over at 60 kilometres per hour in keeping with the speed limit, were slowing to a crawl. Several fender-benders ensued.

"We saw some pretty substantial backups on the bridge and we said, 'Oops, people are slowing down for this cover over the expansion joint,'" Norm Parkes, executive director of highway operations with B.C.'s Ministry of Transportation, said Monday. "Some were coming to a dead stop."

With advice from engineers, the province reshaped the bump, adding layers of rubber to reduce the noise and extending the asphalt ramps leading up to the bump. Following more work on the expansion joint, the bump was removed on Aug. 22. Traffic returned to normal.

The work on the expansion joint is about 80-per-cent complete. Mr. Parkes says work will resume when required material is on hand and engineers have reworked the bump design.

"We have challenged the engineers to see if there is a better bump design that can be put in … ," he said, "and what's a good window for doing that from a traffic volume perspective – like we don't want to do it over a long weekend, that wouldn't make a lot of sense."