Awesome, thank you.

And yes, I hope the long term plan has the entire Salmon Arm area bypassed.

Much of the highway can be upgraded properly via twinning, but there are a few sections where entirely new alignments should be done.

This is great news - I especially like #5, I can't understand why it hasn't been done already as it is one of the easier sections (relatively speaking).

I would hope the Feds match these funds at the very least as this is a national highway.

I believe the remaining distance to be twinned between Kamloops and Alberta, excluding the parks and currently planned projects, is 240km. That's all I was referring to because the parks are not part of the cost for the province. The article is found here:

http://www.revelstoketimesreview.com...ml?mobile=true

As for a Salmon Arm bypass, that's decades away even if they select it as the preferred option given the extreme cost. I seem to recall the alternative as a single lane bridge with an 80km/hr speed limit connecting west of Canoe.

Alot of the provincial sections also will be quite expensive in terms of bringing to a 100km/hr+ standard. Three Valley Gap and near Chase, for example, are top of mind.

I was also including the 100 km in the National Parks. While National Parks upgrading will be 100% federal dollars, they are still federal dollars that must be taken from BC's overall federal infrastructure allocation, which takes away from other areas.

That's what also happened with the Banff twinning in terms of AB's federal infrastructure share.

BTW, after Banff is completed to the AB/BC border, look to the feds to continue westward into Yoho NP. At least to Field as a first phase and down the road eventually connecting to the KHC making a continuous 4-lane divided highway past Golden to Donald.

The Shuswap Lake Crossing between Ford and Canoe will be one of the last projects on the list IMHO and will probably be 4 lanes when undertaken.

I agree with your assessments stingray.

Banff will be completed this year except for a bit of landscaping. It seems strange that they'd be fixing the old bridges in Yoho near Field right now if they were planning to twin the highway anytime soon. My guess is it'll be a few decades for Yoho unless the politicians change focus. Hopefully I'm wrong and the bridge fixes are just emergency repairs.

Does anyone know why they didn't just continue the Coquihalla all the way to Alberta? I know it wasn't part of the project but it seems like a natural extension that could really speed up the trip and have better alignments than the TCH. A reasonable toll road could be built in 10 years couldn't it? (I still think the TCH should be twinned, but another highway wouldn't hurt).

Perhaps there were just too many parks on the way to Alberta?

Three valley Gap is brutal, I see them filling in part of the water along there, cause BC doesn't build tunnels unless the alternative is literally impossible.

I read on the Banff website that they've been talking about twinning to field for awhile. The website says that a short transition zone of four laning into Yoho (like less than 1 km from what I gather) is supposed to be part of current twinning under a proposed amendment.

The Shuswap lake crossing will be a mess too because Salmon Arm is the Nimbiest place I have ever seen lol. The area around Canoe beach is relatively secluded at this point, and I'm sure the locals will be up in arms.

The Malakwa and North Fork Bridge projects have been posted on the MoT website, so I guess it's official!

http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/highwayprojects/Hwy1/index.htm

Seems like BC MoT is really going on the cheap side.

- The twinning will feature 5 at-grade intersections in total - which is not surprising.
- No grass median and again, no median barrier. The existing grass median will immediately taper and disappear at the transition into project zone.
- Total twinning is 6.1km, although the gap between the two segment is only 4km.. I wonder how much they save by building two transition zones instead of just finishing it all at once.

ok, honestly, 4 of those intersections could easily be built as 2 diamond interchanges instead, or even the really cheap interchange where the is an offset off and on ramp on both sides of the highway connected by a small 2 lane underpass / overpass in between.

Definitely agree with the points of no median barrier and lack of grade separation. Safety has to be a bigger priority on these projects. I will say that the Malakwa bridge segment would be tough to divide with a grass median even if funds were available because the rail tracks are on the north side of the highway, and the south side has housing that would have to be expropriated.

I''ve noticed over the past few trips to BC, the sheer amount of freight being shipped to Edmonton and points north may necessitate the twinning of the Yellowhead from Hinton to the Hwy16/Hwy5 junction just north of Valemount. As the Prince Rupert port takes shape, the highway between this port and the industrial heartland will become a critical link, and the obvious bottleneck is the highway through Robson and Jasper parks.

Seriously doubt this. I have conducted environmental work in conjunction with DFO within the Three Valley Gap area, and they (DFO) are fiercly protective of the natural features it contains. BCMOT will most likely have to find another alternative.

Raised highway through there?

I'm glad to hear that cause it's a beautiful area. Just gonna be expensive whatever the alternative is.

Looks like traffic has moved onto the new Donald Bridge and Overhead today:

http://wcs.pbaeng.com/projects/R2-Hwy1-Donald

~20 years ago, back in 1993, BC MoT undertook preliminary design and considered 6 separate options for the 7.5 km Three Valley Gap segment albeit no mention of the shoreline:

:previous:

What sucks is that the Ministry doesn't follow those recommendations. In the file with that report they mention the west bench realignment of the highway at Donald, realigning the highway through the Turtle Valley, realigning the highway through the Kicking Horse Canyon to the south side, etc.

The Ministry doesn't seem to care what the previous studies recommend, they just care about cost. Most of the studies recommend freeway alignments with design speeds of 110 and 120 km/hr where feasible, which definitely won't happen.

I drove from Sorrento to Calgary yesterday and observed the following along the busy highway (surprisingly busy to me for October)

- As mentioned earlier the Donald bridge and new railway bridges are open to traffic. It's still 1 lane in each direction but the construction seems to be on schedule for a fall wrap up. They are already starting the demolition of the old railway bridge.

- Ditto for the Clanwilliam overhead. Almost ready for twinned traffic.

- I hope when they mentioned roadwork between Donald and Golden they were referring to twinning all the way between Donald and Golden. I'm afraid they may just be referring to the short 1k between the railway bridge and truck weigh-station since no announcement was made. That still leaves about 32km of relatively straight and easy highway untwinned. Man - it was brutal on the 35km stretch by Donald to Golden. About 40 cars and semi's (that I could see) were stuck in a convoy behind a semi doing 80kph & 60kph on corners. The traffic was so heavy in the opposite direction - as per usual - there was no way to pass the scared trucker. For 35 km!

- The wall they're building to twin the highway 4k east of Golden for about 1k+ seems to be proceeding. I couldn't see it very well but it seems like the roadway elevation will be dropped quite a bit (unless of course what I saw was just the base or mid section - in which case they have a pretty substantial amount of work left to raise the new roadway to the same elevation as the current road).

- The Golden hill improvements are done. It's a shame the shoulder is tiny on the hill since you wouldn't want to be beside someone on that section since there is little room for error in places. I can see why the shoulder is tiny (avoiding the cost of a retaining wall) - and unfortunately I can see them fixing it again when money becomes available since it's an obvious slow spot & choke point. Still though - a twinned road is nice even if it's built to a lower standard.

- Some of the newer sections of the highway near the huge bridge they built east of Golden obviously still have rock-slide issues. It's a shame since it seems like they tried to do it correctly. There are 2 huge piles of rocks leaning on the barriers (I can't tell if they made it onto the roadway - but I suspect they must have and been cleared, as was the case last year). There is also a comically gigantic round bolder right at the edge of the roadway. Too bad I couldn't get a picture. It looks like something Wiley Coyote pushed to squish the roadrunner. I can only imagine the look on people's faces when that came down lol. If it had rolled onto the highway it would flatten a semi (or roadrunner) like a pancake.

- Someone had asked earlier about why the don't just 4 lane between Malakwa and North Fork when they replace those overheads. There are 2 bridges in between them. One is fairly new - but is only 1 lane in each direction so it'll require another new bridge. Given the short distance it would be nice if they just completed the whole section but that would likely double or triple the cost. (given their commitment to twin the highway though it seems strange they don't just go for it while they're working in the area. I would assume you'd save money by doing it all at once). But using the cash to fix up some of the more dangerous bridges that are left may save some lives and be better spent elsewhere for now.

- They've cleared trees in Glacier right by Banff - so it looks like they definitely plan on extending the twinning into Glacier for a bit. Given the amount cleared though it looks like it's only about 500m. Hopefully they can just make use of the current construction crews and save some time and money on the extension.

- The roadway and bridge railings in most of the BC National Parks are in pretty bad shape. As in - they had to put up temporary concrete barriers on many of the 60 year old bridges because the guardrails are breaking apart. They are resurfacing some pavement in Mt Revy park - which was well needed. Hopefully their delays in resurfacing the other parks and fixing their bridges is an indication that they are waiting to do that as part of a twinning project.

- The bridge work by Field has wrapped up (after 2 years?). (no roadway improvements - likely just maintenance work)

- The traffic in Banff has been routed onto the new roadway. There is still a lot of paving and some bridgework to do in Banff but if the weather holds it looks to me like the Banff twinning could be done this year aside from next years planned landscaping.

Yeah the December 2010 update for the project mentions that Parks Canada was pursuing an amendment to the 2004 environmental assessment (Phase IIIB) to allow a short transition zone to be constructed within Yoho, so 500m is probably right.

BC MoT hasn't made any announcements yet on twinning between Donald and Golden.

I understand some of that is temporary. When the new Hwy 95 interchange is constructed at the bottom of the hill, Hwy 1 will be re-aligned moving up the hill as well.

http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/kickinghorse.../Segment_1.pdf