BUILDING A SAFE TRANSPORTATION CORRIDOR FOR CENTRAL AND NORTHERN COMMUNITIES (2024)

Issue

The Quesnel River Bridge presents continual challenges to the movement of goods and services between Northern, Central and Southern BC. Trucks, that are not hindered by their size, must cross the hazardous bridge and drive through a size-restricted city center, creating congestion, pollution and safety concerns. With mining in the region, namely the Osisko Mine and the Artemis Gold Mine Project, the size and number of vehicles is expected to increase. This antiquated piece of infrastructure needs to be prioritized for replacement.

Background

The Quesnel River Bridge was built in 1961, and acts as the main northern thoroughfare. It is vital for the transportation of goods and services to 50+ communities north, northwest and northeast of Quesnel:

• North: Hixon, Prince George, Salmon Valley, Bear Lake, McLeod Lake, Mackenzie, Lemoray, Chetwynd, Tumbler Ridge, Hudson’s Hope, Dawson Creek, Taylor, Fort St. John, Wonowon, Pink Mountain, Sikanni Chief, Buckinghorse River, Trutch, Prophet River, Fort Nelson, Summit lake, Toad River, Muncho Lake, Liard River, Fort Halkett, Coal River, Skooks Landing.
• Northwest: Vanderhoof, Fort Fraser, Fraser Lake, Burns Lake, Houston, Telkwa, Smithers, Hazelton, Kitwanga, Terrace, Prince Rupert, Meziadin Junction, Bell, Bob Quinn Lake, Tatogga, Iskut, Dease Lake, Laketon, Porter Landing, Jade City, Centerville.
• Northeast: McBride.

The need for an Interconnector was identified over 30 years ago, labeled as a priority in the Highway 97 Quesnel Transportation Study Phase 1 (2016) and entered the design stage in Highway 97 Quesnel Transportation Study Phase 2 (2018).

The current route poses both safety and transportation concerns. The increase in highway traffic due to Artemis Gold, Osisko Development Corp, and our logging industry means large commercial trucks are driving directly through the downtown core of Quesnel. The Transportation Study (2016) highlighted 86 trucks carrying dangerous goods passed through Quesnel Weigh Scales in a single 8.75 hour shift. This amounts to over 235 of these trucks daily passing through Quesnel’s downtown on top of the 700 peak time vehicles that also share the road. This causes a serious risk to our hospital, senior’s homes and residents.

The corroded, height-restricted, two-lane Quesnel River Bridge creates many hardships for larger vehicles, such as those used in transporting goods. These vehicles, vital to the BC economy, often bypass the Quesnel River Bridge by using an alternative route through Kamloops. This adds over 466 km to the Vancouver-Northern BC route, an unnecessary expenditure of employee and travel time, fuel, as well as increasing GHG Emissions.

The size of the transport trucks entering the bridge creates a bottleneck which has been the cause of accidents. On January 26, 2024, an accident took place on the bridge. This created traffic delays for two and a half hours, preventing employees from reaching work, parents from picking up children, emergency vehicles from attending patients, and goods from being delivered on time. This only proves to highlight one of the larger safety concerns, the need for a safe transportation corridor to facilitate the evacuation of Central and Northern communities in the event of natural disasters, such as forest fires, landslides or floods. If this accident happened during an evacuation due to a natural disaster, it would prohibit travelers from reaching their destination and endanger their wellbeing.

Traffic, once across the bridge, must then navigate downtown Quesnel. The downtown core was not built to accommodate the size and the number of vehicles now using the highway. Quesnel prides itself on tourism, however, access in and out of the city is a growing concern, which hurts local businesses. The commercial and industrial traffic also causes health concerns with idling heavy traffic that starts and stops in the downtown core of Quesnel. While moving through city streets, the heavy traffic creates increased emission pollution, as well as safety concerns for pedestrians sharing this main highway.

THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS

That the Provincial Government:

1. Prioritize the timely, efficient, and safe provincial transportation corridor flows near the city of Quesnel by replacing the existing, outdated, unsafe bridges and right of ways to allow a cleaner, more reliable provincial highway system around Quesnel’s downtown core, as part of the Northern Gateway.