It won’t look like much more than some extra asphalt by the side of the road, but the provincial government says a new $950,000 pullout north of Merritt on Highway 5A should quell fears about truck traffic on the road.

The pullout is 12 kilometres south of Kamloops on the southbound side of the highway.

Transportation Minister and Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone said the space will “provide a really important safety hub” for Commercial
Vehicle Safety and Enforcement (CVSE) officers who are conducting inspections of trucks.

It will also double as a resting spot for truck drivers who need to pull over and take a break.

Truck traffic on Highway 5A was a major concern of Stone’s Kamloops predecessor, Kevin Krueger, who tried unsuccessfully many times to have commercial truck traffic banned on the road, and speed limits reduced for local truck traffic.

“Some of these guys [truck drivers] are just crazy,” Krueger told KTW in 2010, after a series of accidents between Merritt and Kamloops led to one of his several attempts at a ban.

“They’re driving too fast. They’re crashing their rigs into each other and, worse yet, they’re crashing their rigs into people who have nothing to do with the way they’re driving.”

Stone said the government’s pullout, coupled with increased CVSE and other improvements to signage, are his preferred way of improving road safety without impacting the trucking industry’s ability to move goods through the province.

“If we were to start banning truck traffic on particular corridors in this province, there are lots of corridors that potentially one could look at and ask questions about whether commercial truck traffic should be on them,” he said.

Mitchell Zulinick, a director with the B.C. Trucking Association, said he welcomes the new pullout, and believes it will make?the 5A safer for motorists.

“It’s absolutely making the highway safer, because it’s making it safer for inspection officers, it creates more pullouts for drivers, and it heightens inspections — which good companies will always tell you is a good idea,” he said.

As of last summer, CVSE officers patrol Highway 5A 20 days of each month, up from 15 before that. 

Glenn Taylor, district CVSE manager, said inspectors do visual checks of 13 items, including a truck’s steering, tires, brakes, driver qualifications and hours on the road. Officers also have portable scales to weigh vehicles at pullouts.

Taylor said the average inspector will conduct five or six inspections per day while on patrol. 

By Andrea Klassen, Kamloops This Week