Jim Warren is a recovering academic as retired adjunct professor and lecturer in environmental sociology at the University of Regina.
Editor’s note: This week is the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Show in Weyburn. And as such it’s very long days on site and I simply cannot put a full effort in there and punch out fresh copy the same day without working myself into a second heart attack. So watch for extensive coverage of the show in the days and weeks ahead. And if you’re reading this Thursday morning, why the hell aren’t you in your truck on the way to Weyburn to take in Day 2 of the show, anyhow? Finish this great column, gas up your truck, and go!
Prairie farm groups and potash exporters want the federal government to address safety and mechanical reliability issues afflicting the Second Narrows Bridge at the Port of Vancouver.
In mid-May, several agriculture lobby groups and the fertilizer industry sent a letter to Mark Carney and Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon. The letter claims the problems associated with the bridge threaten to disrupt shipping and trade relations with Canada’s export customers.
The letter says, “Failure to address these infrastructure vulnerabilities will reinforce perceptions of Canada as an unreliable trading partner, with serious implications for investment, market access, and the long-term strength of our export-driven economy.”
It would probably be a good idea for oil producers to start making similar demands on Ottawa if they haven’t already done so. That’s because oil tankers filling up at Trans Mountain Corporation’s (TMC) Westridge Terminal, at Burnaby, B.C. have to pass under the Second Narrows Bridge twice per trip.
According to an article that appeared in The Western Producer last week, the 57 year old railway bridge over Burrard Inlet is owned by CNR. It provides the only rail access to major port facilities on the inlet’s North Shore, including the Richardson and Cargill grain terminals and the Canpotex potash terminal. The Second Narrows rail bridge and the North Shore terminals are responsible for 1/3 of the cargo shipped through Vancouver each year. Rail traffic must be halted when large ships travel under the bridge. This is because a central span of the bridge has to be lifted to allow larger ships to pass under it; especially at high tide.
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In February of this year the old bridge provided shippers with a mild reminder of the disruption it can cause. The lift span (and the section of the railway it supports) failed to return to the down position after being raised to let a ship pass. Luckily it took just half a day to fix the problem. But during that time trains could not run to or from the terminals on the North Shore.
The Second Narrows railway lift bridge. The photo looks east from the Pacific side of the bridge. Notice the fenders protecting the vertical piers supporting the bridge. The fenders are about two generations behind current bridge safety technology (see photo of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay to see the latest tech.) Photo by Huntley Photography/Wikipedia
Presumably the flip side of the problem—having the bridge stuck in the down position, could prevent large ships from passing under the bridge; especially at high tide. The Westridge Terminal’s website indicates that it cannot accommodate tankers any larger than the mid-size Aframax class. The size limitation is likely due to cramped conditions at the easterly end of Burrard inlet and issues arising from the depth of the harbor and height of the bridge.
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The TMC’s Westridge tanker terminal on the North side of Burrard Inlet and East of the Second Narrows Bridge. Not a lot of extra room to maneuver. TMC photo.
TMC has indicated that additional dredging in the inlet, under the bridge and in the area around the terminal can be employed to increase the number of ships that can be handled by the Westridge Terminal—but there is only so much that can be done. To the untrained eye of a flatlander, it looks virtually impossible to accommodate ships from the larger oil tanker classifications.
Assuming the two largest tankers seen in the above photo are Aframax tankers they would be around 255 metres in length and 34 metres at their widest points. The large supertankers that typically make trans-ocean voyages are much larger. For example, Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) are approximately 330 metres long and 55 metres wide. And, VLCCs are not the largest class of tankers. Ultra Large Crude Carriers are even bigger. No less critical than length and width, is the draught of a fully loaded tanker. That’s the depth of water required for it to float. In other words, it is the vertical distance from the bottom of the ship’s hull to the water line. Supertankers require at least 80 feet of water.
The Aframax tanker Mitera Marigo. According to the TMC’s Westridge terminal website, Aframax tankers are the largest ships the Burnaby terminal can accommodate. Photo by Penny Kall.
To take advantage of the greater efficiency and cost savings offered by VLCC and ULCC tankers compared with less efficient Aframax ships; oil from Aframax vessels can be transferred to supertankers once the Aframax ships are out in open water. Albeit, there are overly fussy environmentalists who claim ship to ship transfers increase the risk of oil spills.
The Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC) TI Asia, formerly named the Hellespont Alhambra. There are only four TI class tankers. They are the largest ships in the ULCC class and also the largest ships in the world. It’s a type of ship you will never see at the TMC terminal. Photo credit: US Coast Guard
Even if the water at the Westridge terminal has been dredged to a depth of 80 plus feet, what are the chances a supertanker can safely fit beneath the lift span of the bridge? As it happens, the biggest problems encountered at the bridge are from ships colliding with it. Based on the 2012 photo seen earlier, the bridge appears highly vulnerable to collapsing after being struck by a big ship. Perhaps improvements have been made since the photo was taken. If not, appropriate safety measures should be taken. Recent developments in the technology to physically protect bridges are described later in this article.
(A bullet list showing comparative data for the various classes and sizes of oil tankers is available in the Appendix provided at the end of this article.)
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The crash of 1979
The minor problem with the lift span in February this year might have reminded older prairie farmers about a far more significant problem with the Second Narrows Bridge. In October 1979, on a day with a heavy fog, a Japanese freighter hauling logs, the Japan Erica, crashed into the bridge. The section of the bridge to the North of the lift span collapsed and fell into the water. The bridge remained closed for repairs until March 4, 1980.
The loss of the bridge meant prairie grain could not be delivered to terminals on the North side of the inlet, including a high volume Richardson facility. One of the big concerns for the prairie agriculture sector is the loss of reputation and customers caused by lengthy shutdowns at the Port of Vancouver due to things like grain handler strikes and the loss of a bridge. The 1979 accident wasn’t the first time a ship had hit and damaged the Second Narrows Bridge.
Collisions prior to 1979
There were several earlier iterations of the rail bridge at the Second Narrows dating back to 1925. Since then there have been five incidents in which vessels have had damaging collisions with the bridge. In two of those collisions one or more sections of the bridge collapsed and fell into Burrard Inlet. In another of the accidents a badly damaged section of the bridge had to be taken onshore for repairs.
A collapse caused by a barge hauling logs in 1930 produced significant damage, bankrupting the bridge’s owner at the time. The bridge remained closed for four years after that accident.
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Artificial islands and dolphins: Lessons from a bridge collapse in Maryland
The collapse of three large spans of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March 2024 blocked access to the Port of Baltimore for three months. Baltimore has one of the busiest ports on the US East coast. It handles more automobiles shipments than any other port in America. Media reports claimed that in addition to killing six workmen, the economic losses due to blocked access to the port were around $15 million per day. According to a report in the Baltimore Sun, repairs to the bridge will not be completed until 2030 and are expected to cost from $4.3 billion to $5.2 billion.
One of the collapsed sections of the Francis Scott Key Bridge fell onto the container ship that struck it in March 2024. What are the chances the Second Narrows Bridge would suffer a similar fate if an oil tanker collided with it? Public domain photo by National Transportation Safety Board.
As you would expect an accident on this scale gets a lot of people in the media and officialdom asking questions and pointing fingers. It is a well-known fact of life in the world of shipping, things can go wrong causing ships to hit the vertical piers or pylons that keep bridge decks in the air. That’s what happened to the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Pilots lost control of a massive container ship and it crashed into one of the support piers, knocking it down along with three full spans of the bridge.
It turns out solutions to this sort of accident have been common knowledge among the engineers who design bridges for some time. Furthermore, those solutions can often be applied to existing bridges that lack them. There are three principal methods to physically limit the damage caused when a ship hits a pylon. The least robust of these is to install “fenders” around the base of the pylons. It is less expensive to place fenders only on the side of the pier most likely to be hit by a ship.
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Have another look at the photo of the Second Narrows Bridge provided earlier in this article. Unless they have been upgraded since 2012 the piers holding up the lift span are protected by fenders that to a mechanically astute prairie farmer would appear to be less than adequate. Engineers agree that fenders alone don’t always make the cut it when it comes to protecting bridges from the large container ships and oil tankers using major ocean ports these days.
According to Sameh Badie, a professor at George Washington University’s School of Engineering, modern bridge builders rely on two types of protective structures, used alone or in combination to provide adequate physical protection.
“One method is to create artificial islands that surround bridge pylons,” says Badie. “Any hit would be absorbed by the island, not the bridge. Another option is to install a robust system of defensive structures known as dolphins —rings of concrete pillars [positioned to deflect ships on a collision course for a bridge’s pylons] and to absorb the impact of a careening ship. The dolphins are anchored at the bedrock and stand off about 40 feet from the pylons.”
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Artificial islands, and dolphins are clearly visible in the photo of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Florida’s Tampa Bay provided below.
An aerial photo of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Lower Tampa Bay in Florida shows both artificial islands surrounding pylons and circular concrete dolphins used as protection against collisions with large vessels. Photo credit NPR News.
The bottom line
Is there enough room between the piers on the Second Narrows Bridge to allow for artificial islands and dolphins? If engineers determine there isn’t, does that mean a whole new bridge is required, or should we just take our chances?
As prairie residents, many of us are handicapped by “railway derangement syndrome.” We know pigs will fly before CN willingly pays for artificial islands and dolphins let alone a new bridge.
Will Mark Carney step up to the plate and cough up the cash required? One would assume this is a distinct possibility based upon the prime minister’s posturing regarding the diversification of Canada’s export opportunities. It seems like a task tailor-made for the Building Canada Office in Calgary. Having a project that wasn’t already approved and underway to work on might give the bureaucrats at Building Canada something useful and rewarding to do.
Furthermore, ensuring safe and reliable access to Canada’s only Pacific oil terminal should qualify as a strategically important national objective.
I expect if oil executives ask nicely farmers and potash miners would be happy to have them lend a hand with the lobbying campaign to upgrade the Second Narrows Bridge.
By the way, after spending considerable time trying to figure out where the First Narrows Bridge is located. I discovered it is actually the famous Lions Gate Bridge connecting the City of Vancouver to North Vancouver.
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Appendix
Comparative data for the various classes and sizes of oil tankers*
- General Purpose (GP) tankers
Small Product tankers
- Frequently used to haul refined products short distances
- Capacity 70,000 barrels to 190,000 barrels
Medium Range (MR) GP tankers
- Frequently used to haul refined products, e.g. gasoline
- Capacity 190,000 barrels to 300,000 barrels
- Mid-Size Crude Tankers
Panamax tankers
- Designed to fit through the locks on the Panama Canal
- Capacity 300,000 to 500,000 barrels
- Approximate dimensions: length 226 metres, width 32 metres
Aframax tankers
- A mid-size tanker class based on criteria developed for the Average Freight Rate Assessment scale.
- Capacity 500,000 barrels to 800,000 barrels
- Approximate dimensions: Length 255 metres, width 34 metres.
- Large Crude Tankers
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Suez Max
- Designed to navigate the Suez Canal when fully loaded
- Capacity approximately 800,000 to 1,000,000 barrels
- Approximate dimensions: Length 285 metres, width 45 metres
- Supertankers
Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC)
- Designed for long distance cross-ocean transport
- Capacity 800,000 barrels to 2,000,000 barrels
- Approximate dimensions: length 330 metres, width 55 metres
Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC)
- Designed for long distance cross-ocean transport
- Capacity 3,000,000 to 4,000,000+
- Approximate dimensions: length 380 metres to 415 metres, width 56 metres to 68 metres
*Data derived from US Energy Information Administration publications.
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