The new alignment of hwy 97 between Winfield and Oyama is now open!

Fair to say that I am intimately familiar with the area... lived in Vernon from '75-99 ;)

I don't think Monashee pass has ever changed as long as I can remember. They added the 4 lane stretch close to Needles about 15 years ago but that's pretty much it.


As for the bridge.. I don't think that it's made a huge difference really. I don't think I've ever seen it backed up that bad. Granted, back in the day when one directino was cut down to one lane it was sometimes equally as backed up as it is now. The floating bridge was never that big an issue in off-peak either

Another TCH closure in BC for many hours. Interesting how the police blame the driver for losing control and causing a head on accident. No doubt true, but they forget the seriousness of the accident might have been minor if the road was built to modern safety standards (twinned and divided). There was a similar crash on the Coq last winter that had a much better outcome because of the barriers on that highway. The economic impact in this case wasn't mentioned. At least the BC twinning website isn't afraid to admit that roadway design contributes to accidents - even if police won't. (I even saw a police caused accident in BC - a minivan rolled when a cop ran out to stop it from speeding)

http://www.revelstoketimesreview.com...220050651.html

Reminds me of a roadway in Calgary. After the second head on collision on a roadway (Sarcee Trail) killed another person they finally decided to put up barriers. The police also blamed the drivers in that case - not the fact that the high speed curve had no barriers. Little comfort for the innocents involved I'm sure.

Roadway designs should do as much as possible to protect people from boneheads, mechanical failures, bad weather, medical conditions and distracted drivers. We'll never have perfection - until perhaps cars drive themselves, but simple safety features like barriers are easy enough.

Fair to say that I am intimately familiar with the area... lived in Vernon from '75-99 ;)

I don't think Monashee pass has ever changed as long as I can remember. They added the 4 lane stretch close to Needles about 15 years ago but that's pretty much it.


As for the bridge.. I don't think that it's made a huge difference really. I don't think I've ever seen it backed up that bad. Granted, back in the day when one directino was cut down to one lane it was sometimes equally as backed up as it is now. The floating bridge was never that big an issue in off-peak either

Edit: Disregard my "Status: Completed" message in italics below. The webmaster just removed the message since the project isn't completed. Just a mistake on their part.


This site indicates the last project on phase 3 of the KHC status as completed. Odd, since I don't think it is.

2 weeks ago it looked like there was a lot of work left but no workers or equipment there (I assumed perhaps they were waiting for a pour to dry or something).

http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/tranprojects...tails&id=22592

Note the listed "project benefits".

I drove the bridge on a daily basis for years and believe, it made a huge difference. I won't forget sitting on Harvey as traffic crawled towards the bridge (two lanes heading out of Kelowna even) with no air conditioning in my first car and wishing I was elsewhere. Happened every day for months in the summer. The backups are much less severe. Once in a blue moon will it back up to Ethel or Gordon now, and Ethel was pretty normal in the summer!

Off-peaks were problematic too. I can remember crawling down bridge hill on a Sunday morning pretty regularly. Guess all the church goers clogged up the bridge. Winter however, was never too much of an issue, but that goes for almost everywhere in the Okanagan for traffic.

New Update on the KHC Project website. I think it is the final part of Phase 3 in KHC.

http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/kickinghorse/khc_updates.htm

"August 22, 2013
Project Update

4 Kilometre Grading, Paving and Finishing
GOLDEN - Dawson Construction Limited was awarded a contract in July 2013 to complete the remaining roadworks on the Trans Canada Highway four kilometres east of Golden. Work includes grading, paving, drainage, barrier placement and wildlife exclusion fencing. Construction began mid-August and will be finished later this year."

Hopefully they'll break the expensive Phase 4 of the project up into smaller chunks over the winter and complete some of the design work so it's ready to start when funding becomes available. It would be nice if they could start on some of the pieces - and I'm sure the local construction companies would appreciate the work. If they look to get funding for doing the last section all at once I imagine it'll be a long wait due to the huge cost to do it in 1 project.

Kicking Horse Canyon Project
 

http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/kickinghorse/khc_updates.htm

August 22, 2013

Project Update
4 Kilometre Grading, Paving and Finishing

GOLDEN - Dawson Construction Limited was awarded a contract in July 2013 to complete the remaining roadworks on the Trans Canada Highway four kilometres east of Golden. Work includes grading, paving, drainage, barrier placement and wildlife exclusion fencing. Construction began mid-August and will be finished later this year.


Definitely a minor update, but it's the first time anything has been posted on the website in a very long time. Hopefully further work is announced this year.

Amen to that.

A new KHC photo was added today...

http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/kickinghorse/khc_updates.htm

Looks like a slight trickle of water could wash all those hill sides away

Some more recent shots of the Winfield to Oyama section of Hwy 97:

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5505/9...afaf864f_b.jpg

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5502/9...1034081c_b.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3736/9...ee6027ca_b.jpg

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2815/9...494c4ce2_b.jpg

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5477/9...7502993c_b.jpg

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2841/9...81cc0794_b.jpg

Awesome!
So nice, new, & Black.

Wow, if I didn't regret selling my roadster before today, I certainly do now.

Looks fantastic! This must cut down the travel time between Vernon and Kelowna quite a bit.

Grasping at straws are we on this one? It really is impossible for you to say anything positive regarding any highway or bridge project in BC isn't it?

^ I bet under nominal conditions it saves a few minutes at best.

What it will save is the numerous accidents that happen on that narrow stretch alongside Wood lake.

Worked as a wrecker operator through college at OUC.. pulled more than a few unfortunate souls out of that lake in the mid '90's

That's a fair assessment. People were already doing 90-100 in the old section - the only time most did the speed limit was when it was congested. Say you're doing 120 vs. 80 over 9km you're saving 4.5 minutes, but most did more on the old segment so it's 2-3 minutes at best.

Show me a Vernon bypass, that'll save a lot more.

Drove the KHC last week. They have a sign "Construction starting Sept 3 - expect lane closures" in the middle of the completed section east of the big bridge. Strange - it's all completely twinned there until Yoho so I'm not sure what they'd be doing. Perhaps more animal overpasses for the Big Horn/Cougar population that lives all along there?

The last 1.2 km section of phase 3 is showing a lot of construction activity. It certainly seems like the retaining wall isn't complete yet. It's strange how the website implied Tercon Construction" would finish it - but then there was very little work done and it recently switched to Dawson Construction. You have to wonder what happened. Anyway, at least we're finally seeing some progress in wrapping up phase 3. Once that's done then hopefully they'll start baby steps with phase 4 without the typical 5 year delay between announcements. Doing phase 4 in small reasonably priced sections makes a lot of sense unless a big bag of money becomes available.

It looks like the roadway collapsed in Yoho by the spiral tunnels tourist stop. One lane there is gone for a short ways. There are a few loaders down the cliff-side making what looks to be emergency repairs. (Yikes - brave operators!) We can only hope the hill down to Field is twinned soon. They spent a lot of time doing emergency repairs on the bridges over the last few years, but the whole section of road is in very poor state. Seems best to just twin it rather than patch it, although so far I haven't heard anything but speculation indicating the Feds ever intend to twin it.

Lowering the speed limit to 70 by the tunnels is absurd given that it's a passing lane and nobody pays any attention to the speed reduction because they're trying to overtake the slow moving vehicles at that point. The tourist traffic there never seems to cause issues with the road there - it's way safer than many rest stops where the TCH speed limit isn't reduced. One silly change they just made west of Field is slow the road down to 70 way before Field. Again - absurd and ignored by all. You're driving along doing 90 and suddenly the road changes to 70 for no reason at all - miles from town now. Contrast that with the eastbound 60 kph drop by Revelstoke that comes without warning. Traffic often comes to a screeching halt well before the speed reduction due to the strange traffic light just before the bridge. Speed limit signs need to make sense or they just increase danger - yet all through BC on the TCH they have some head scratching speed decisions.

Likewise they have a tiny roadway detour by the ever present mudslide area by Heather Hill. I couldn't tell what they're doing, but there always seems to be equipment there - likely trying to figure out a way to keep the mud off the highway. There was an overturned semi right at the site. Looks like he took the detour too fast and ended up in the ditch on a sharp turn. The cab looked okay so hopefully the driver wasn't hurt too bad.

The short Yoho Twinning by Banff (~ 0.5km?) is almost done now and looks almost ready for pavement. Too bad they didn't go a bit farther since it seems like there are a least a km or 2 that would have been an easy build (easier than the nearby Banff section anyway). Man, I hope when BC puts their welcome sign back up they leave off "the best place on earth" or whatever it was. That just comes off wrong to visitors and sounds arrogant.

A lot of badly needed paving has been done in the parks. The BC transportation website has a whole article explaining how much cheaper it is to maintain a road surface every 4 years rather than delaying repairs. They need to pass that info on to the folks are Parks Canada since they let the roads degrade pretty badly before patching them.

Construction by Pritchard is finally underway again. Odd that they lost most of the construction season before starting work. Perhaps that had more to do with the contractor than the gov?

Salmon Arm looks to be wrapping up the utility construction on the west side of town. One hopes it was done with anticipating the upcoming twinning. It really seems like they should have fast tracked the twinning to do it all at once. It's pretty flat and obvious what to twin. I hope they bury the power lines along there. Salmon Arm has such a pretty TCH roadway for much of it one would hope they don't just make an eyesore of the rest of it. As my sister in Fernie pointed out, too many BC towns have junk piles and eyesores at the edges of their towns. (It happens everywhere - but in BC where the scenery is so nice it really sticks out).

Driving BC you really wonder why we don't build more deceleration or merge lanes along the highway. At some points the entire road stops when someone wants to turn into Tim Hortons, or the Enchanted forest. Really unsafe and relatively cheap to correct in most places. Sometimes a quick safety fix is in order rather than waiting decades for true upgrades to occur.

Is it impossible for Metro-One not to attack people who have a negative comment like Libtard had? Even though I happen to agree with Metro-one on this one, Libtard was simply making an observation about how it looked. Don't take it personally, sometimes brand new roadways have defects, and sometimes people have valid criticisms and negative observations about roads in BC. He (she?) posted some pretty sweet pictures so quit whining every time someone comments negatively about "your" wonderful BC roads.

They had to do emergency repairs to the eastbound lanes approaching the big KHC bridge because of rocks falling on the roadway - a huge amount of rocks - after the project and rock protection was long completed. Other sections of the completed KHC are already in need of fixes. So it's not like new roads are always perfect.

ANOTHER semi rolled off the highway in the same spot today - stopping the TCH in both directions for more than an hour. Obviously the construction folks are at fault in this case. Poor/incorrect construction zone signage is a real problem in Alberta - and obviously in BC too. It's likely the experienced semi drivers made some assumptions that got them into trouble. The road is closed there so often they likely didn't realize the roadway was actually changed.

For those not familiar with Heather hill - huge mudslides started flowing onto the TCH there a few years ago. (Oddly, since they didn't in the past). So they are digging out the mud all the time now. (kind of like the serious rock slide areas - where instead of a fix, you just deal with the accidents and debris)

I wonder if BC has a website tracking the days and hours the highway is closed every year. It would be embarrassing - likely closed a month a year. No wonder the politicians are starting to slowly wake up to this issue. They really need to pressure the feds like in the old days. Didn't BC join confederation because of the railway? Don't they expect a working highway now connecting BC to southern Canada?