New pullouts and 5.5 km of road resurfacing are the latest steps that the province is taking to improve the safety of Westside Road.
The project will cost the province $1.35 million and will be completed by late fall.
“It’s a start,” said Westside-Kelowna MLA Ben Stewart.
“I think it’s pretty clear that the magnitude of rebuilding Westside Road is in the neighbourhood of hundreds of millions of dollars. The reality is that our first priority is to improve the existing road.”
The portions that will be improved are: Near La Casa, starting 400 metres north of Barcelona Road and continuing north for one km; near Parker Cove, starting 400 metres south of Whiteman Creek Bridge and continuing north for 1.5 km; near Little Kingdom, starting 700 metres south of Six Mile Road and continuing north for 2.9 km.
“These are the most targeted, specific safety improvements that the government can deal with in term of its financial ability.
“We made improvements last year, this year we’re making more and there are further announcements to be made on this corridor, hopefully in the coming months.”
Three new pullouts for slow-moving vehicles and highway signage improvements will also be made this year.
“The vehicle pullouts will give recreational vehicles the chance to move over so traffic doesn’t back up. . .the signage is for (drivers’) own safety to not overdrive the road.”
Westside Road was named B.C.’s worst stretch of pavement in the British Columbia Automobile Association’s 2012 campaign to identify the worst road in the province.
Stewart said that these improvements have been in the works for some time and are not a reaction to the survey.
Murray Tekano, district manager for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, said that sharp curves and pavement width are the top concerns that most people have with Westside Road.
He added that barriers may be part of future improvements to the road.
“Roadside barriers are usually set on asphalt. They absorb energy when something hits it by moving the barrier instead of putting all that energy into the vehicle. So to put down a roadside barrier, we have to have a wide enough road width that the barrier can be put on it,” said Tekano.
“Where we can do widening like that, then we would do that. But we’re also looking at alternate barrier systems. Our ministry has been using cable barrier systems. . .we may be looking at systems like that on this roadway as well, but it still has to go through some engineering reviews.”
wpaterson@kelownacapnews.com
