LITTLE CURRENT—Experienced travellers heading to and from the Island on Highway 6 tend to time their arrival and departures to avoid the opening and closing of the Little Current Swing Bridge (although just about everyone gets caught occasionally), but recently timing wasn’t everything as the oldest structure on a provincial highway stalled twice in one week throwing an unanticipated delay into some travel plans.
“There was an electrical fault on one of the proximity switches on the bridge,” said Carole Paiement, communications services coordinator with the Ministry of Transportation. “The proximity switches monitor the position of various moving components of the bridge as it swings and closes.”
According to Ms. Paiement the electrical fault in the proximity switch triggered a circuit breaker in the main control panel interrupting the bridge’s ability to swing closed. “This event occurred while the bridge was closing on Monday, June 12 and again on Wednesday, June 14,” said Ms. Paiement.
She went on to note that “during the two events when the circuit breaker was triggered due to the electrical fault, bridge staff were able to manually override the main control panel and close the bridge. Disruption to highway traffic was minimal and there were no swings lost for marine traffic.”
Things should be back to normal operations now. “The electrical fault in the proximity switch has been corrected and the bridge is back to routine operation,” said Ms. Paiement.
