Your plan for Sorrento is more or less the official long term plan.

Again, from all the studies and documents I’ve seen the only two areas without a clear plan is the three valley gap and through Salmon Arm.

It would be nice to get a Kicking Horse Canyon style plan going for the Three Valley Gap.

I would be okay if Salmon arm is the last section to be tackled.

As for Field, well, welcome to building highways in BC! Steep canyons, narrow Valleys, lakes, rivers, etc…

Beauty of an area seems always directly proportional to the level of difficulty in road building… ;)
We may have to ask the Yankees how they’ve built I-70 through the Rockies. That may provide some inspiration.

That is the price to pay for the scenery.

Their secret is a national highway system!

Even the American interstate system has surprisingly few tunnels through the mountains.

So, updated designs for Boucherie Rd. Interchange and Westlake Rd. Interchanges were posted a few days ago.

This is the only real highway upgrade coming to the Okanagan for a while, so they better enjoy it!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...24e21d2e_h.jpgKI1 by Ian, on Flickr

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...3375c412_h.jpgKI2 by Ian, on Flickr

https://i.imgur.com/E1bQcVo.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/p3T7sSJ.jpg

Vicars Road around 4pm is torture. It took me seven minutes to get off the frontage and onto the highway Eastbound because the frontage intersection constantly clogs. Not 24 hours earlier I waited to turn eastbound but there was four or five cars already lined up between the highway lights and the frontage intersection with everyone waiting in the other three directions to turn onto the highway as well. Light goes green, they all turn left, light goes yellow and before I can cross and exit Eastbound I'm dicked for another three minutes by an F350 and a 50 foot horse trailer blocking the intersection AND taking all the spots at the light so they can turn left.
Likewise the lights at the same time can back up traffic nearly a kilometer long heading Eastbound as far back as Ashley's Furniture, causing people to exit off the highway to the frontage by the Burger King, only to get jammed at Vicars or get stuck trying to turn left onto Valleyview Drive which at this point is heavily loaded with people exiting downtown that you get a lineup as far back as the Shell station.

I actually forgot I posted that idea here before. Thanks for the reminder. This imaginary new pass has a pretty steep ridge at the summit that be tough for holding reasonable hill grades. The options seem to be a long tunnel (500-1000 m) or something around the ridge with a 100-200 meter long bridge to keep the grades from being awful. Here's a picture from Google Earth with some lines to hopefully show steep this ridge is with the red line being less awful and only needing a bridge.
https://i.imgur.com/8D1oXc4.png

Since this is the same area as Three Valley Gap, I assume the rock conditions would be crappy here too. Avoiding a tunnel would be the best option. When I have some more free time I'll see if I can flesh out something more to see how feasible this really is.

That intersection is the biggest cluster F@#*! All the lights through Valleyview need to go, especially that one.

I had a chance to look into this a bit more and it looks like it'd work but not well. It'd probably end up remarkably similar to Kootenay Pass where it's just nonstop 5-8% grades for ~15 kilometers on both sides of the summit. It also needs to wrap around a summit ridge with some steep slopes next to the summit. It's not an ideal mountain pass compared to the flatter grades you see on the current route through Eagle Pass. It'd be nice to do it since you can get a bypass of Revelstoke and a new Columbia River crossing built in the process. The hillside next to Revelstoke means the river bridge would be really high up...like 50+ meters in the air.

BC isn't afraid of doing modern highways in difficult passes like this at least. 97C leaving the Okanagan Valley climbs at 6-8% for almost 25 kilometers, and the new Wood Lake bypass on 97 near Winfield is another good look at what the big rock cuts and big fills needed for a new mountain highway would look like.

I agree: it’s definitely more ideological than technical when something doesn’t get done (i.e. how Malabar Drive will never have 4 lanes). KHC Phase 4 shows that B.C.M.I.T. does have the geotechnical expertise to contend with mountains of unstable rocks.

As for long steep slopes… Coquihalla Pass has one spot with 6% slope for 19 KM so why not here too. ;)

Kicking Horse Canyon progress.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...ee850407_h.jpgBC Highway 1-Kicking Horse Canyon-Phase 4-Sheep Bridge to Grizzly Wall by B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, on Flickr

^^
That is going to be so much better once its done. But as you head west back to the two lanes again.

Step by step it is all being four-laned, but obviously Kicking Horse was a priority that just had to be tackled ASAP. And what a huge, huge improvement this will be when completed. The old alignment looks like a rickety construction road by comparison.

No 4 lanes? :(

There's pretty much no traffic there every time I was there. The only time it needs 4 lanes is when Highway 1 is flooded between Abbotsford and Chilliwack.

Yeah, 2 lane structure is fine here. I actually have some nostalgia for that old wooden bridge. Will be a little sad to s we it go. It has a rustic character that matches the farmland surroundings.

We needed 2 extra lanes on highway 1 from Hope to Horseshoe Bay decades ago. Highway 7 east of Misson to Hope is fine at 2 lanes with the occasional passing/climbing lane.

The US has a massive defence budget and the interstate system is tied to it. In fact, the official name is of the system is The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.

Kicking Horse Phase 4 is now open for 4 lanes of traffic. Site is closed for the winter with only minor work still needed to be done next year.