CHICOPEE - A city councilor is renewing his effort to close a bridge underpass to all trucks after a tractor trailer carrying 41,000 pounds of candles was wedged under the railroad bridge on Prospect Street for about three hours last week.

The bridge is nearly two feet too low for a standard tractor trailer to pass under, but the clearance can look deceiving because it dips under and then slopes up. It is on the upward slope that trucks often get stuck - and sometimes seriously wedged - under the bridge, City Councilor William Courchesne said.

He said he has tried everything and still, in July alone at least two other trucks ended up having to back up at the last minute when they realized the underpass was too low, snarling traffic at the busy area where several major roads converge.

Wednesday was the latest incident of a truck getting wedged under the bridge. A driver heading to Yankee Candle carrying 41,000 pounds of candles got hopelessly stuck and his box trailer bent nearly in half when he struck the bridge at about 10:30 p.m. Crews from Interstate Towing spent three hours offloading two-thirds of the cargo and removing the badly damaged truck.

Prospect Street was closed for three hours and people were told they had to seek an alternate route, said Michael Wilk, police public information officer.

When Wilk posted the warning on the Police Department Facebook page, more than 100 people commented, mostly incredulous that trucks get stuck there time-after-time.

In February, the City Council passed a resolution to simply ban all trucks from the underpass at the request of Courchesne. It was adopted unanimously.

"I'm still waiting for the signs," he said. "Engineering looked at it and said they have to post a truck route if we do that."

But this isn't the first time Courchesne has tried to solve the problem. The bridge was originally posted as having a passable clearance of 12 feet, 6 inches but he went back to the state and asked them to measure it again while considering the rise of the road under the bridge, he said.

Officials did and re-posted the height of the bridge at 11 feet, 9 inches. Still it doesn't really matter because the standard clearance of a tractor truck is 13 feet, 6 inches, Courchesne said.

He also went so far as to have the 11 feet, 9 inch clearance sign posted on either side of the bridge itself, which is rarely allowed, Courchesne said.

"I had to have three state agencies to cooperate and agree to do this," he said. The state Department of Transportation oversees the bridge, Pan Am Railways owns the bridge and AmTrak uses the rail lines.

Clearance signs are also posted in several locations, including at the intersections before the bridge to give truck drivers plenty of warning and an ample opportunity to stop, Courchesne said.

Adding flashing lights to the sign has also been considered but Courchesne said there is some debate among traffic officials on whether they work.

The fine for ignoring the clearance signs is $100 so it does not serve as much of a deterrent, he said.

When a truck does crash into the bridge or if he sees one backing up at the last minute, Courchesne said he tries to talk to the driver and find out how he ended up in the predicament.

Invariably drivers say they were following directions on a GPS. In one case a driver said he was using two different GPS systems and they both sent him that way. Courchesne said he asked one why he kept going when he saw the sign and the driver answered: "I got confused."

"I may have to start calling the GPS companies myself. I don't know what else to do," he said.