One of British Columbia’s most important transportation routes is set to reopen to commercial vehicles Monday, after suffering major damage in November’s storms.
Road crews worked around the clock to bring the Coquihalla Highway back online — with restrictions — for Dec. 20, weeks ahead of earlier estimates of when it could be safe to drive.
“There’s no possible way to express our thanks enough, not just for the engineering crews, but for those workers who have been working in the cold and the rain and the snow on a high mountain road, literally day and night for a month, to get us back to this point,” B.C. Trucking Association president and CEO Dave Earle said.
“It’s just a huge thank you from our industry.”
The highway will be restricted to commercial vehicles and inter-city buses, and will have sections with reduced lanes and limited speeds. Vehicles will be limited to 60 km/h in two-lane sections and 100 km/h in four-lane sections.
Earle said that it was too early to say how much those limits could affect travel times, but that the Ministry of Transportation had estimated it would add about an hour to trucking times.
B.C.’s main link between the Lower Mainland and the Interior has been closed since suffering extensive damage from multiple slides and washouts following a powerful atmospheric river that hit B.C. in mid-November.
About 20 sites are impacted along the route with about 130 kilometres of the road needing repairs.
Highway 1 also remains closed due to storm damage, and commercial traffic has been limited to the steep, winding Highway 3.
“Trying to figure out how long it’s going to take, where to put assets, how to move loads, has been challenging, and then the drivers doing the work and driving on Highway 3 have really had a challenging time,” Earle said.
“It’s a difficult highway. It was never designed to handle the amount of traffic that we’ve seen on it, but it’s served us very well.”
In Merritt, which is still recovering from damage due to massive flooding during the storm, the prospect of re-establishing a key route to the South Coast has residents excited.
“Having the Coquihalla come back online is a huge deal for us. It is by far and away the biggest, straightest link we have from Merritt to the Lower Mainland,” Merritt Emergency Operations Centre information officer Greg Lowis told Global News Morning.
“It’s the vital artery that carries everything between the Lower Mainland and the Interior, particularly with Highway 1 still unavailable.”
Merritt remained connected to Kamloops and Kelowna by other routes, but Lowis noted that they included high mountain passes, and have been subject to challenging, wintery weather in recent weeks.
Reopening the Coquihalla will help ensure a steady supply of key goods, including food, to the flood-ravaged community.
Truckers passing through likely won’t be able to stop for very long, however, as Merritt hotels are fully booked with flood evacuees and flood recovery crews.
“It’s definitely true we don’t have the normal capacity that we would to host people who want to stop as a part of their visit, but we do still have facilities that people will be able to use,” he said, adding that gas and food are available to anyone passing through.
The province is aiming to remove the essential travel-only designation from Highway 3 within 24 hours of the Coquihalla reopening.
However, officials are still advising people against unnecessary travel, amid challenging road conditions and a surge in new COVID-19 cases.
— with files from Amy Judd
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