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COLUMN: Little headway on wider highway

Despite plans to four-lane the Trans-Canada Highway from Kamloops to Alberta border, much of that stretch remains just two lanes.
OPINION-TRans-Canada widening
A stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway has been widened to four lanes near Chase, B.C.

Returning home last week after spending a few days in the Okanagan, I encountered a detour on the Trans-Canada Highway that hadn’t been in effect when I had headed west the weekend prior.

The detour, which forced me to go south on Highway 95 to Radium Hot Springs before taking Highway 93 through Kootenay National Park to reconnect with Highway 1, added about 100 kilometres to the stretch between Golden and Banff. 

If you thought having to get off a major highway that traverses a country as vast as Canada in favour of a backroad would make the drive not only significantly longer but also considerably slower, you’d only be half right. After all, highways 93 and 95 are, for the most part, winding, two-lane roads with infrequent passing lanes so they’re not exactly the kind of route you’d choose if you’re looking to make good time. 

Sadly, however, there’s pretty much no difference between a road intended for a scenic drive through a national park and one that’s purported to be the country’s major east-west highway across the eastern portion of B.C. 

I hadn’t driven that section of the Trans-Canada for the better part of a decade so any previous scars had healed, but they soon came back as I found myself not so patiently waiting for those elusive passing lanes, only to find myself behind yet another semi-truck or motorhome in short order. The last time I drove it I saw signs trumpeting the four-laning of the highway from Kamloops to the Alberta border and I remember thinking that would be an ambitious, albeit overdue, project for a government that in recent times has struggled when it comes to major infrastructure work. 

Doubling the width of a 500-kilometre stretch of highway, often through mountainous terrain, seemed like a big ask for a government that’s only been able to build one rapid transit line a decade in Greater Vancouver and still hasn’t figured out a way to replace a four-lane tunnel across the Fraser River that reached capacity four decades ago. 

Not surprisingly, the highway looked almost identical to how it did almost 10 years ago, so much so that I had to go to the B.C. government’s website to find out exactly what had been done over the last decade. What I found could be summed up in six words: not a heck of a lot. There were updates on the four-laning work but they were limited to a two-kilometre stretch here or a four-kilometre piece over there, a proverbial drop in the bucket when you’re talking about a 500-kilometre strip of asphalt. 

There’s no doubt that four-laning the Trans-Canada Highway will be prohibitively expensive and require engineering ingenuity of the highest order, but perhaps its biggest stumbling block is that it will all take place hundreds of kilometres from B.C.’s major population centres, which means it’s simply not a priority for vote-conscious politicians. 

The B.C. government can’t provide the roads and bridges needed to keep traffic flowing in Greater Vancouver, so I suspect despite signs heralding a well-intentioned widening project, the Trans-Canada is going to look like it’s always been for decades to come. 


Ted Murphy

About the Author: Ted Murphy

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