Announcements, updates and news on new projects, events, and initiatives impacting your community.
Can’t you hear the whistle blowing? This summer (June 2017, to be exact), the first train went over the new CN Rail crossing at the Stone Creek to Williams Road project. This is a significant milestone for the project, which is upgrading 3 km of Highway 97 from two lanes to four lanes as part of the Cariboo Connector Program. With the new bridge now operational, crews are now turning their attention to decommissioning and removing the old bridge....
Planning on heading over the Coquihalla this summer? Head’s up! A couple of construction projects may slow you down a bit. That’s because we are working on improving parts of BC Highway 5 between Hope and Merritt from April to October, 2017. It sucks. We know. But it’s for a good reason. We appreciate your patience. Here are the details: First up – Box Canyon Chain Up Area Expansion Northbound commercial vehicle traffic on the Coquihalla Highway is often...
What the heck is a Geoscientist and how does the work they do help highway travel in BC? It’s National Geoscience and Engineering Month in Canada and to recognize that, we reached out to Alexandra McGladrey, G.I.T. to chat and learn more about the great work that our she and other geoscientists on staff do. Alexandra joined the ministry through our Engineer-In-Training/Geoscientist-In- Training program and gave us tonnes of great insight into the role… March is National Engineering and...
In Canada, we celebrate National Engineering and Geoscience Month in March, highlighting the importance of engineering as a career and its impact on our daily lives. Engineering is such a HUGE part of what we do at the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. From wildlife overpasses to Port Mann cable collars to rip rap to speed limits, it’s all covered with an engineering expertise. To showcase some of the work we do, we collected some of our most popular...
Rushing rivers and soaring mountains make for a beautiful road trip, but when it comes to widening and improving highways, those same breathtaking features can pose an incredible challenge. Few highways in BC are more beautiful or challenging than the Kicking Horse Canyon along Highway 1. Constructed through Kicking Horse Pass in 1962 and following basically the original Canadian Pacific Rail route, this portion of the Trans-Canada Highway reaches its highest point at an elevation of 1,643 metres or...
Westside Road is a narrow, picturesque, two-lane road running along Okanagan Lake in the BC interior. Its dramatic beauty and winding roads make it a pretty popular route for motorists of all types. To keep this road safe and accessible for everyone, we’re widening and realigning 1.2 km of the road between Four Mile Creek and Waterfront Farm (north of the Highway 97 and Westside Road interchange in West Kelowna). We took a short video in the fall of...
In spring 2016, Tuck Inlet Road was a gravel route connecting the ferry landing at Tuck Inlet, to the village of Lax Kw’alaams, 17.5 km northwest. It’s a different story now. The road is critically important to Lax Kw’alaams’ approximately 820 Tsimshian First Nations residents, as the village can only be reached by water or air. It’s their link to supplies, services and people coming into Lax Kw’alaams, and to medical care, education, economic opportunities and people, places and...
What would a high-profile historian say about the 75 new BC Stop of Interest signs to be created? We asked Bill Barlee’s daughter, Veronica Barlee, a senior policy advisor with the provincial government. Veronica graciously agreed to talk with us about her father’s role in preserving and sharing BC’s colourful history, and how new Stop of Interest signs will help to continue Bill Barlee’s work. Barlee passed away in 2012, at the age of 79. He remains a beloved figure...
