As we all know, once we get into winter, the highway lines virtually disappear making it extremely difficult to see where you are in the travel lanes. I contacted the Ministry of Transportation and asked them why they don’t repaint the lines prior to the onset of winter.
I was told it is very expensive and as a result they only paint them once a year. If this is the case, I suggested they paint the lines just prior to winter when it is dark at 4 p.m. instead of the spring when we get much more daylight and have a chance to dodge the bad drivers that hog the centre of the road. Of course this was ignored.
I travel the Coquihalla four times a week and they finally showed up to paint the lines in the late spring with something that resembles latex paint and is hard to see in the rain as there is no reflectivity to it. Four days after painting the lines and painting right through the potholes and cracks in the road, they showed up with some useless invention called spray-patching which I gather is some sort of mixture of oil and sand. Of course they spray-patched all of the lines into oblivion and a few days later, they had to come and repaint the lines.
Shortly after repainting the lines, the ministry decided to do a little paving going up to the snow shed and just beyond, and also some from the summit toward the old toll booth. Of course, all of the newly painted lines disappeared again. So out they come again and repaint the lines for the third time in a very short period.
Now the useless spray-patching is already starting to show small holes and will soon be large potholes when winter sets in. So we will once again be dodging holes and trying to see where the lanes are as they will all disappear just like every winter.
They will soon be out repainting the lines on Highway 1 into Vancouver as they do every year, at least two times, even though for the most part it isn’t needed.
Also on the new highway between Winfield and Oyama, the ministry paid to have rumble strips put into the road north and southbound and now they have paid someone to go and pave over most of the rumble strips for some unknown reason. Money well spent.
I just wanted to let people know how wisely the Ministry of Transportation spends our money and due to the large amount of money wasted we can’t get our roads properly paved and maintained in the winter.
This is just one area so I wonder how many more costly mistakes the ministry makes throughout B.C.
Dave Jones
Vernon
