Burton Canal Bridge Will Close to Heavy Trucks

Belize City drivers, get ready for a change. The Burton Canal Bridge is being replaced, and the work will reshape traffic at that crossing in the months ahead. For motorists and residents, the big questions are what will change and when. Chief Engineer Evondale Moody says restrictions on large trucks, trailers and dump trucks are expected to take effect in January, with affected vehicles being redirected to the John Smith-Philip Goldson Highway.

 

Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer

“ We will have to be sending out a notice very soon hopefully later this week or early next week, because the contractor will start with the construction of the diversion for the replacement of Burton Canal Bridge. However, that diversion will only be a single lane, and so we will have to restrict, heavy goods, traffic traversing that area. And so the ministry will send out a notice later this week, as I said, or early next week, that coming January 2027 we will only allow motorcycles and light vehicles and buses and light freight vehicles to traverse that area. All other heavy goods vehicles coming from the port or trailers or dump trucks will have to utilize the John Smith Philip Goldson Highway to enter into Belize City, and reverse the same thing to leave Belize City because we cannot allow all those traffic to pass through that single lane structure that we’re going to build. So we are doing that in anticipation of coming in the next three months because three months is right around the lane, and so we want to get motorists and residents to be familiar with what we will do at that intersection.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

Watch the full newscast here: