KEEP B.C. BUSINESS MOVING (2023)
Issue
B.C. is Canada’s Pacific Gateway, the gateway for vital trade to and from Asia. Effective transportation networks are a fundamental and necessary underpinning of this trade and economic activity. And an integral part of B.C.’s trade & transportation infrastructure is the Highway 1 corridor.
Following the floods of 2021, the province and country saw the vital role this corridor plays in internal and external trade and transportation . While progress has been made in improving some parts of this corridor, further prioritization of enhancing Highway 1 capacity into and out of the Fraser Valley is needed.
Background
The Corridor’s Importance
The Highway 1 corridor is of provincial and national importance, providing direct, indirect and induced benefits, including the facilitation of billions of provincial and national GDP activity, the underpinning hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country, and the contribution towards billions in tax revenue.
Many of the goods moving along Highway 1 are bound for the Port of Vancouver, which helps facilitate trade through Canada’s west coast. Approximately $1 in every $3 of Canada’s trade in commodities and goods beyond North America move through the Port of Vancouver, making it a critical component of Canada’s economy. In 2021, overall cargo through the port reached 146 million tonnes valued at over $240 billion.
From semi-trucks and trailers hauling freight, to logging and industrial trucks serving the resource industries, to smaller trucks serving local businesses, the trucking industry relies on an efficient Highway 1 corridor as well. Trucking is a significant economic sector and driver in B.C. Each year, more than $3 billion of goods are trucked between the gateway ports and rest of Canada, and the industry itself accounts for 2 percent of B.C.’s GDP, employs about 40,000 people, and is larger than other major industries, including forestry, pulp and paper, and oil and gas.
Beyond direct trucking and industrial use, 80,000 other vehicles use the corridor daily to commute to and from employment, or to conduct other personal and commercial business. These are the employees who power our business sector, the tourists who support the visitor economy in the Fraser Valley and into the B.C. Interior, and the service providers and tradespeople who deliver our goods, build our houses, and fix our infrastructure.
Trade, trucking, tourism and regional employment all depend on the Highway 1 corridor, and the corridor’s importance was vividly illustrated during the aftermath of the record floods of 2021. Following flooding of the Highway 1 corridor, swaths of the highway were closed in Abbotsford, Chilliwack and Hope, severely limiting transportation into and out of the region, to and from the ports, and from the coast into the interior and beyond.
This acute loss of usage of Highway 1 illustrates its importance, and yet we have allowed the Highway 1 corridor to suffer functional loss of usage regularly due to traffic, congestion, lack of capacity, and aging supporting infrastructure like overpasses and interchanges.
The Challenge
Our ability to effectively trade goods and services hinges on robust transportation infrastructure. The portion of the Trans-Canada Highway 1 extending across Greater Vancouver and through the Fraser Valley to Hope is a critical artery of Canada’s Pacific Gateway. In recent years, population and trade growth, a regional industrial land shortage and the marked growth of the Abbotsford Airport have overburdened Highway 1, resulting in heavy congestion, safety implications, and challenging our ability to effectively move goods and services into and out of the region.
Today, congestion grinds the corridor to a halt regularly, with average travel speeds dropping to 20 km/h during regular travel peaks, and some commutes taking upwards of 1.5 to 2 hours to travel between Abbotsford and Vancouver. This lack of capacity not only makes it difficult for employees to plan commute times with certainty, it has rendered near impossible travel between the Fraser Valley and Vancouver or other western parts of the region during much of the day. This leads to employees regularly being late to work or job sites, and worse, causes many employees to opt out of job opportunities that would require travelling the corridor, further exacerbating the labour shortage challenges faced by many businesses.
Without capacity increases, this problem will only get worse over time While today, truck traffic accounts for approximately 16 percent of daily volumes along the corridor, or approximately 12,500 trucks per day, by 2035 it is anticipated that truck demand will increase by 24 to 33 percent. Couple this with the expected 61% increase in the Fraser Valley population in by 2051, and it is clear this corridor’s current capacity will not meet the needs of B.C. residents or businesses.
The Solution
The provincial government is currently advancing a Highway 1 Expansion Project, but in incremental stages which does not constitute a regional solution.
The Highway was widened from 202 Street through 216th street in 2020, and the next phase is currently underway with a widening of the highway from 216th street to 264th street. This project is not expected to be complete until late 2025.
A third phase of expansion beyond Langley and into Abbotsford is still in the planning and consideration phase, and therefore many years off with no timeline publicly committed to. Currently, no plans exist publicly to expand the corridor’s capacity beyond Whatcom Road further into Abbotsford or beyond to Chilliwack.
As a priority, the provincial government should commit to expediting the remainder of the Highway 1 expansion to Abbotsford, complete with replacements of aging overpasses such as at 264th street, and then immediately begin developing plans for building additional capacity further into the Fraser Valley, through Chilliwack and to Hope and to the connections with Highways 3 and 5.
This focus and priority would provide much needed capacity for trade and transportation in and out of the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley, and would underpin decades of future growth and prosperity. The demands on this corridor will only increase and the costs and delays on our economy will only deepen with time. The time is now to invest and build to keep B.C. business moving.
THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS
That the Provincial Government:
- Recognize the priority of the Fraser Valley portion of Highway 1 as a major economic corridor and expedite the final stage of the current Highway 1 Expansion Project with widening and expanded/replaced infrastructure from 264th street to Whatcom Road
- Immediately begin planning and prioritizing further expansions to the Highway 1 corridor from Whatcom Road through Abbotsford and into to Chilliwack, Hope and the connections with Highways 3 and 5.