Party for new B.C. bridge draws tens of thousands, turns chaotic

B.C.'s newest bridge has seen its first traffic jam and it didn't involve a single car.

Tens of thousands of people took advantage of the warm weather Sunday and crammed onto the Golden Ears Bridge to celebrate the completion of the $800-million project.

But the scene at the six-lane bridge, on the Fraser River east of Vancouver, quickly became one of chaos. One woman went into labour, one man had a heart attack and at least a dozen others fainted.

Some visitors complained of excessive pushing and RCMP Cpl. Holly Marks said a number of parents lost track of their young children.

"There's so many people, it's really easy to get separated," Marks said, adding that all of the children were eventually reunited with their families.

The bridge opens to vehicle traffic on Tuesday and connects Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows to Langley and Surrey B.C. Crossing the bridge will be free for the first 30 days, but after that an electronic tolling system kicks in.

Sometimes plans go awry: TransLink

The bridge is owned and operated by transportation authority TransLink.

Company spokesperson Drew Snider said TransLink was expecting a large crowd for the gathering but said sometimes even the best laid plans go awry.

"Opening a bridge is not something you do every week," Snider said.

"It's just one of those things where you plan as best as you can and sometimes the plans just don't always work as they're supposed to."

He said TransLink was temporarily forced to suspend its free shuttle bus service. The buses had been brought in to drop visitors off at each end of the bridge.

"We had to suspend the bus operations because there's just so many people on the bridge," Snider said, estimating that the service was suspended for about half an hour.

"The prudent thing to do was to stop bringing people to the bridge until we could get people off the bridge."

Marks said the large gathering forced RCMP to try to control the flow of pedestrian traffic.

"They stopped the flow onto the bridge so there's controlled entry. As people leave, they let more people on," she said.

Snider downplayed the assertion that the scene was a chaotic one.

"I didn't see any [chaos] but it's a big bridge and there may well have been areas where people didn't quite know what to do or where to go just because there were so many people out there," he said.

"It's always kind of a crapshoot when you're organizing an event this big with so many people coming to it. You're not sure how many people you're going to have."

Snider said TransLink officials plan to debrief organizers of the event.