Quote:
Originally Posted by WarrenC12
Highways 1, 3, 5, and 99 give us a pretty good range of options from Vancouver to the rest of the province/country.
This weather event blew them all away. Having highway 1 run through the Sumas prairie seems dumb in hindsight, but where else would you build it?
Highway 5 was a great addition in the 80s. I'm not sure what else people are expecting.
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There's the option for several other routes out of the Lower Mainland.
The most likely to get built is probably up the Harrison/Lillooet River Valley from Harrison Mills to Pemberton. The FN up there want it. The current road is terrible, but the terrain isn't that bad compared to say the 99 between Squamish and Horseshoe Bay.
The Duffey Lake area is still a bit of a challenge, but that addition means any landslides on the 99 between Horseshoe Bay and Pemberton wouldn't require diversion through Lillooet.
There's also road routes up the Capilano Water shed to Brittannia Beach and up Indian Arm to Squamish. They'd have a fair bit of environmental based opposition, but they've already been mostly established as controlled access roads for forestry or gas pipelines.
There's also some options between Tulameen and the Coquihalla Valley, which could bypass Merritt and Hwy 3. There's logging roads there that could be upgraded.
A tunnel connecting the Bridge River Valley and the Seton/Pemberton Valleys might work, or an all weather road on the Hurley Pass to Gold Bridge. These could also improve connectivity from Pemberton North and East.
If you wanted to get really fancy, building a continuous highway up the coast towards Bella Coola might even be possible.
Most of these options are expensive, but $500m/day in lost trade is probably worse. This was only a large rain storm. Imagine we get a big earthquake.
That's just the road options. There's many more rail options since the tunnels can be much longer.