Photo via Skilled Truckers Canada/facebook
As crews clean up the last of a crash which shut down the Yellowhead highway Thursday morning for hours, the Mayor of Barriere says a draft plan has been created to ensure traffic can still move in the case of highway shutdowns.
Having pressed the issue for over a year, Ward Stamer says a draft proposal from the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure will see local and emergency traffic be routed around any lengthy shutdowns of the Yellowhead.
“It’s not going to be something that’s going to be up on DriveBC where everybody can use. That’s not really the point. Because we don’t want semis on these roads. Most of these roads are gravel roads that are maintained by the contractors,” said Stamer.
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has confirmed the draft plans.
“Through this plan, traffic control personnel and signage will be set up when there is an extended closure, and when the ministry has all the necessary resources to support a detour,” said the Ministry in a statement to Radio NL.
Notification of crash on Yellowhead Highway north of Barriere, Oct 27/2022@1pm/Via DriveBC
Stamer says there are still a number of issues still to be ironed out, including the availability of flaggers to control traffic in times of a shutdown, on top of the continued maintenance of the emergency routes through the winter months.
“We’ve identified six to seven different check-points that have to be serviced with flag people,” he said. “That’s where at right now is determining who would those flags-people be, because right now there’s not a lot of extra capacity because of the pipeline.”
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure suggests this is something that is being worked on.
“For shorter duration closures, the ministry will still complete safety patrols on side road routes to ensure they are in good condition for the increased traffic that is diverted onto the routes,” said the Ministry in its statement.
Stamer expects this plan to be implemented this winter.
The emergency routes would be confined to use by emergency crews, as well as locals living in the region.
“They did present us a basic engineered plan of how we could go from Heffley Creek, up the Sun Peaks Road, Upper Louis Creek Road, then come back to Barriere,” said Stamer.
However, he suggests there has been interest in creating similar plans in areas north of Barriere along the Yellowhead corridor but says there are both geographic and jurisdictional challenges that have to be overcome there.
Yellowhead Highway route between Kamloops and Highway 16/via Google Maps
“The challenge lies north of Barriere, because the section from Barriere to Chu Chua is mostly gravel and that is maintained by the Ministry of Transportation to their contractor, ARGO. Past that there’s only limited maintenance, particularly in the wintertime,” notes Stamer.
“I know [Clearwater] Mayor [Merlin] Blackwell has been working on this file as long as I have, trying to figure out a way that we can do,” he added.
“We had an incident last year when there was a fatality south of Little Fort where we had a bunch of school kids in Clearwater playing soccer. They went on that back road and, unfortunately, it was very treacherous.”
Serious crashes along Highway 5 north of Kamloops have often shut down the highway for the better part of a day, restricting local traffic as well as emergency vehicles along the 350-kilometer-long, two-lane stretch.
“When there’s an extended period of time, particularly when there’s a fatality and we have to get a an RCMP specialist either from Chilliwack or Kelowna,” noted Stamer.
“That six or eight hours at least where the highway is closed, and particularly in the wintertime, it can cause us some significant gaps in being able to deliver emergency services, ambulances and even people being able to go back and forth safely.”
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure confirms this emergency route will not be for general or commercial traffic.
“Due to the lower capacity of these sideroads, commercial traffic will not be sent onto sideroad detours,” said the Ministry. “In the case of a closure, commercial vehicles will be held on the highway or turned around to take an alternate route on a numbered highway.”
