Information of interest to commuters, tourists and recreational drivers in rural and urban BC.
Customer service is a major part of what we do at the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. From maintaining highways to handling development approvals, our goal is to provide the best service we can. Of course, there’s always room for improvement. That’s why we’re asking you to help make us better by taking our 17th annual Customer Satisfaction Survey, open from July 16 to Sept. 14, 2018. Last year, we received more than 3,000 responses from folks across the province,...
What’s the flattest route to drive across BC, if you’re taking a road trip, and bringing your accommodation with you? We in BC tend to take our mountainous terrain for granted and those glorious summits somehow become a backdrop to our everyday life. But for less familiar travellers of our province, those snow-capped peaks can be a little intimidating, especially if you drive an RV or fifth wheel, or your vehicle struggles going uphill. That’s why it shouldn’t be...
Scan around Canada’s highway system and you’ll find that BC is the only province to have an A, B, C and D version of a highway. In this province, those letters are tagged onto Highway 97 – as in Highways 97A, 97B, 97C and 97D. But why is that? It turns out that in the Okanagan, locals view Highway 97 as intrinsic to the region’s identity. (After all, another name for Highway 97 which stretches from the BC/US border...
Are you ready? It’s time to hop on board our BC Road Trip Time Machine and travel back to 1966. This time we are driving Highway 8 from Merritt to Spences Bridge and Highway 12 from Lytton to Lillooet. As many of you already know, we’ve been digitizing 16mm photolog footage from 1966 to give you our BC Road Trip Time Machine video series. WATCH Merritt to Spences Bridge: WATCH Lytton to Lillooet: This is an area of the...
When it comes to getting an accurate lay of the land, survey drones are indeed the “droids” we’re looking for. Also known as UAVs (or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), drones are remote controlled flying devices equipped with cameras and various data collection capabilities. There are quad-copter drones (which move like helicopters) and fixed wing drones (which move like airplanes). Both of these make our work safer and more efficient, so it’s no surprise our engineering and field services departments are...
The road trip. The time-honoured tradition of getting in your vehicle, turning up the tunes and heading out on the highway. There’s nothing quite like travelling the open road, soaking in the sights, sounds, and getting to know the communities along the way. Now, there’s a “road trip,” and then there’s a BC ROAD TRIP. From coastal mountains to Interior deserts and northern lakes, there’s so much diverse terrain to cover across BC. Whether you’re travelling solo, with friends...
BC is on guard against nasty invasive mussels that attach themselves to boats in freshwater. (Not to be confused with useful, attractive muscles attached to people.) Specifically it’s quagga and zebra mussels that we’re preventing from entering our province. That’s why on BC’s roads you might see signs for watercraft inspection stations.If you are transporting a watercraft in B.C. it is a mandatory to stop and report to all invasive mussel watercraft inspection stations along your travel route. Watercraft...
OK, choose your own adventure time… bear jams edition. Scenario: You and your kids are driving along one of BC’s picturesque highways (imagine the Sea to Sky, or Highway 4 to Vancouver Island’s west coast). All of a sudden, you notice a number of stopped vehicles ahead and people gathered around, their attention drawn to… what’s that?… a mother bear with her wee cub! Wow! Do you… A) Pull over slightly, tell the kids to sit put, and...
