MLA Norm Macdonald is disappointed that the Speech from the Throne delivered in the Legislature this week contained not a single word about improving the Trans-Canada Highway between Revelstoke and Golden.
“I was very disappointed that the Throne Speech didn’t say a single word about actually completing the work on the Trans- Canada Highway that the BC Liberals have been promising,” he said.
Macdonald said that even though the BC Liberals promised that a four-lane divided highway from Kamloops to the Alberta border would be completed by 2021, at the current pace of completion it will take not 6 years, but 61 years.
“The 400 kilometre stretch between Kamloops and the Alberta border is some of the most dangerous driving you can do in this country,” Macdonald said in a statement. “Since 2007, there have been more than 100 deaths. And in that same period, over 1,000 serious injuries.
“There have been over 500 closures, sometimes for days at a time. The value of exports that travel on that road on trucks is $3 billion per year, and it is, in places, more like a third world road than what you’d expect from our national highway.”
Tge stretch of the TCH between Revelstoke and Golden was identified earlier this week as the most dangerous stretch of highway in BC with 38 deaths in the last 10 years.
Macdonald also raised the issue of road maintenance as one of the biggest issues raised by constituents during the winter months.
“I receive way too many phone calls from people who say that the roads are too treacherous to travel on, yet they have no choice; people have to get to work, they have to get their children to school, or travel great distances for medical appointments. My constituents believe that the standards set by government for road maintenance are simply too low. We are putting people at risk when they have to drive on roads that are unsafe just to manage the basics of daily life. There is no question: the BC Liberal government must do better.”
