The provincial government has released preliminary details for a new commercial vehicle inspection station adjacent to Hw16 in Thornhill that’s expected to cost more than $15 million.
Accompanying it will be a state-of-the-art weight monitoring system called Weigh-In-Motion that’s a sensor pad to be embedded into the roadway to electronically collect information from trucks driving over it.
The inspection station will have a footprint of approximately 45,000 square metres or 484,376 square feet with an inspection building of almost 400 square metres or 4,300 square feet.
It’ll be located in the area of Novotny Street and Kirkaldy Street, offline from the highway on the Thornhill Frontage Road.
The facility and embedded sensor replace a weigh station that had to be moved when the province replaced the Hwy16/Hwy37 four-way stop with a roundabout.
There’ll be room for five short term truck stalls and 10 overnight stalls with services such as refrigeration unit plug-ins, Wi-Fi and CCTV.
The Weigh-In-Motion technology can identify a vehicle, check for height, weight and safety credentials when a vehicle passes over the sensor pad at highway speeds.
“By reducing the number of vehicles that must report to inspection stations, inspectors have time to identify and focus on higher-risk carriers to improve safety and efficiency throughout the province. The Weigh-In-Motion sensor pad will also screen commercial vehicles to identify tire problems that affect safety, so it can be dealt with right away,” a provincial transportation ministry press release indicated.
The Weigh-In-Motion pad is expected to be installed this fall while the province expects to choose an inspection station contractor over the winter leading to a spring construction start and a completion date of summer 2024.
Weigh-in-Motion is part of a program called Weigh2GoBC which is a network of monitoring stations allowing commercial truckers to bypass scales if they meet certain criteria.
Those interested in the project can follow its progress at www.gov.bc.ca/terracecvis.
