This column is about same-old, same-old.
Same old government announcing and re-announcing projects for the Trans-Canada Highway, except that none of them are new projects with new funding.
They are simply a continuation of projects already in the works or a re-announcement of works that have already been heralded by the government trumpets already.
It’s just public relations – trying to milk the most political milage out of the spending of our tax dollars.
The B.C. government makes promises about fixing up the Trans-Canada Highway between Kamloops and the Alberta border. Then they re-make them.
The province says the work is all part of its new ( the italics are mine) 10-year transportation plan dubbed, “B.C. on the Move.”
But Premier Christy Clark made a 10-year, $650 million commitment to upgrade the Trans-Canada Highway at the 2012 Union of BC Municipalities conference.
So exactly which new 10-year plan is actually in play?
The 2012 plan or the 2015 one? Or has the 2012 plan morphed into the 2015 plan, which will now continue until 2025?
Among the projects “announced” last week were:
• upgrades to the highway at west Salmon Arm.
• construction on the Malakwa bridge
Here’s the reality
The announcement about upgrades to the highway in west Salmon Arm – that’s so 2013.
A quick search of our archives shows a smiling Christy Clark posing on the bridge that year, followed by the official announcement a few months later.
Ditto for the Malakwa bridge replacement.
A story in our sister paper, the Eagle Valley News in Sicamous in June 2014 noted, “Last summer, (2013) MOTI revealed plans to replace the bridge as part of the B.C. government’s commitment to four-lane the Trans-Canada between Kamloops and the Alberta border. The Malakwa bridge project went to tender in 2014.
But also in the headlines this past week, another fatal highway crash, this one on the Trans-Canada Highway at Hilltop Road near Sorrento.
I hate to use the word “another” because to those who knew and loved Anisha Moore, this was not just another crash or another fatality or another statistic.
This robbed them of a mother, sister, friend. Their lives have been forever scarred.
My sincerest condolences go out to them.
We do not know the circumstances of the crash that killed Anisha Moore. It may be that the road or conditions are not to blame, but it becomes difficult to ignore that ever-growing number of fatalities on the Trans-Canada through the Shuswap.
My patience is sorely lacking for a B.C. government which seems more caught up in public relations than public safety.
