Highways cost money to build but they also cost money not to build. The estimated cost to complete the Trans-Canada Highway from Monte Creek Junction to the Alberta border is $6 billion.
Every year, due to increased construction costs, 10 per cent plus inflation, this cost is increased by at least $600 million whether or not any work is done on the highway. In 2000, the estimated cost was $2 billion. These figures do not represent the cost of lost business due to highway shut down or fatalities (average 16 per year at a cost of three million dollars each).
In order to build highways we must actually work on them with backhoes and bulldozers, not news releases and excuses.
Poor planning and scheduling by the highways department is largely to blame for the increase in the cost of our highways. The substandard materials and workmanship that are used in building these highways result, in many cases, in revisiting and reconstruction of the roadways long before necessary.
There is no reason why highway construction cannot continue year round (in some capacity) as is done in other jurisdictions instead of the half-year construction that takes place in B.C.
At the current rate of construction the people can expect four-laning of the TCH to take 50 years, not the five years that the Coquihalla and Connector took.
It is time for an in-depth investigation of the workings of the highways department to find out why our cost of fatalities on this stretch of road are going to exceed the $150 million that your government has budgeted for improvements on the highway over the next three years.
Erecting more signs and placing do-dads on the road just won’t cut it.
R. A. (Bob) Edwards
