‘Too frickin' slow’: Fraser Valley politicians grill highway officials

Local politicians are not in the habit of grilling provincial bureaucrats who visit them to unveil multi-million (or multi-billion) dollar projects in their region.

But that’s what happened last week when three Transportation Ministry officials previewed the upcoming Highway 1 widening project for the Fraser Valley Regional District’s board.

The FVRD directors—who include councillors and mayors from across the region—urged the province to hurry up with the project, suggested the $25 million variable speed project was mostly useless, and inquired about the future of interchanges, on-ramps, and truck parking locations.

They alternated between appreciation that the project was happening in the first place, and pessimism that it will be completed in the next decade.

“Probably everybody will tell you, ‘It looks great, it's just too frickin’ slow,’” Chilliwack Coun. Bud Mercer said.

Last Thursday, the FVRD welcomed three Ministry of Transportation officials, with project director Trent Folk telling the politicians that the ministry is “working to improve Highway 1 through your communities as quickly as we can.”

But he was met with skepticism and pleas for the ministry to do more, faster, to smooth traffic issues along the Highway 1 corridor.

New details

In August, the ministry released new documents with details on the scope of the project.

If you need a refresher, we broke down the project in detail here:

We also spoke to Minister of State for Infrastructure Dan Coulter, who let slip that the highway might not be widened to Whatcom until 2035. (His staff later said he had misspoke, although they did not provide a new date.)

As revealed in August, the project between 264 Street and Sumas Way has been split into two phases to reduce the scale of traffic impacts during construction.

Phase 3A concerns the segment roughly between 264 Street and Mt. Lehman Road. Phase 3B is the highway through much of Abbotsford, from roughly the Peardonville Overpass to the Sumas Way/Highway 11 interchange. A fourth phase will involve the widening and potentially raising of the highway to and over the Vedder Canal bridge on the Chilliwack border

On Thursday, Folk and fellow project director Elena Farmer revealed new details about the upcoming project, then took a series of probing questions from skeptical FVRD directors.

You can watch the entire presentation here, read our summary or (if you’re an Insider member) see the full transcription of questions and answers below.

New Phase 3A details:

• The province has awarded a tender to remove 180,000 cubic metres of soil from the highway right of way.

• Kwantlen First Nations will remove some trees within the median.

• The province is acquiring properties along the highway.

• Most work is happening within the median, but in other areas, work will take place along the exterior of the current highway and interchange perimeters.

New Phase 3B details:

• Tree-clearing will also take place through the Abbotsford segment of the highway and begin this fall and finish in early spring.

• Construction will take place on King Road, near the intersection with Riverside Road, to move the junction south and provide room for the future widening of the highway.

• Lonzo Creek, which flows underneath the current Sumas overpass, will also be altered.

New Phase 4 details:

• The fourth phase of the project will conclude at Yale Road West, just over the Vedder Canal bridge in Chilliwack.

• Designs must align with flood mitigation work.

• An integrated transportation planning study will be conducted.

Questions and statements: highlights

We’ve included the entire question and answer session below, but have broken down the highlights here.

Chilliwack Coun. Chris Kloot: “I think we can all agree that we're probably 20 years behind. Let's be realistic, [this] should have been done under a previous government potentially. But in any event, here we are. I’m just curious, you commented with respect to the different phases, but you didn't give us the dead targets of when they're due to be completed.”

Folk: “As far as completion dates go, we're in the process of taking in that feedback, finalizing some of the procurement decisions, and we'll have more information on final project budget and timelines later this year for Phase 3A …We're just in the process of trying to figure out the right timing to move forward with that next phase, Phase 3B.

Kloot: That’s good to hear. Will Mt. Lehman Road interchange and McCallum Road interchange have to be replaced? Or were they constructed 15 years ago with the intent of three lanes?

Folk: So the intent with [Mt. Lehman] is to add lanes to the existing structure and not a complete reconstruction of it… And then McCallum is a reallocation of deck space to allow active transportation over the top. The interchange itself isn't undergoing extensive construction.

Kloot: I'm pretty skeptical that I'll see this complete before I'm a senior citizen. So there's a couple of decades yet. But the government was able to scrounge up $25 million, I believe it was, for the variable speed corridor that is very ineffective in this region. And I'm hopeful that at some point, they can look at potentially some quick fixes. Because if the Phase 4 isn’t going to be complete till 2040, or 2035, then I would encourage you to share an opportunity to potentially triple on-ramps in areas that would allow it.

Abbotsford Coun. Patricia Driessen: “Are the on-ramps and off-ramps going to be shorter or longer than the current ones?

Farmer: “It is a concept design. And at this point in time, you know, we still have to determine if this is ultimately what it's going to look like at highway 1. But no, the intent is that they will be longer.”

Harrison Hot Springs Coun. Leo Facio: “Is there any consideration to be like Europe, where the commercial vehicles do not use the fast lane?”

Folk: “Right now, it's not the intent to implement a policy like you mentioned. But again, we've heard that and it's something that we can discuss internally with our traffic safety and policy group about potential future ways to manage the corridor and other corridors.”

Electoral Area B Director Peter Adamo: “I'd like to know how much ALR lands would be used up in this process, as well as the number of residential buyouts that would be required for any of this land acquisition and how you're going to deal with the living-rough population that has taken over certain parts of where your interchanges are going to be developed.

Farmer: “If you're familiar with the 264th interchange, on the northwest corner, our on-ramp to the highway is also someone's road access. So that is a two-way on-ramp and we don't build our on ramps to be driveways anymore so those two properties will be purchased as part of the project and we are looking to do environmental compensation work on them. So there's currently a stream that runs through them. And because we need to buy them due to access constraints, we're planning to do a large portion of our habitat compensation at that location. So that's the majority of that through [Phase] 3A. And then through 3B, we're still working on that design.

“Really, our intent is to minimize property takes as much as possible. On the south side of the highway, between Mt. Lehman and Highway 11, the majority is either industrial or agricultural land and we are working very hard to minimize impacts. On the north side of the highway the biggest impact was potential need for sound walls. So we're still looking at that as part of the program and we do a lot of work to determine where those walls need to go and those would be some of the areas… but typically, that's along the property line. And we work with the owners to put those in place.

“And then there's one property at the highway 11 interchange. I think you can all see it as it's up there. It's one with the purple on there. On the bottom left is where we're realigning King Road. So those that's the property piece. We've really tried hard to make good use of our right-of-way that we have. And it's really around the interchange improvements at 264th that we have the most impacts.

“We're well aware that there are individuals occupying our right of way. Clearbrook is like a really good example. The Bradner rest area. Cole Road. So we're continuing to work with BC Housing as well as the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction in order to do proper outreach.

“We're getting this work started very early in order for us to be able to find suitable housing for them in order to remove them from the site and to prepare the site for the work that we're doing. So it is ongoing, we continue to have those conversations, and we'll just continue to really work with the other agencies in order to find housing for these individuals.”

Chilliwack Coun. Bud Mercer: “I'm struggling between being pessimistic and optimistic thinking about what I'm hearing.

“I guess with some of the wait times that we're expecting, there's so many quick wins. And I know ‘quick’ is a relevant turn. But there's so much that can be done with what's left, because regardless of how far you construct out towards the Fraser Valley, the bottleneck will be coming through our communities, you're just allowing people to get to the horror show quicker, in all reality.

[In] this consultation process, … probably everybody will tell you, ‘It looks great, it's just too frickin’ slow.’ Right? It needs to pick up, and nobody out here is happy with Highway 1 and the Ministry of Transportation for the provincial government.

And I know your folks aren't the ones writing the checks, I get it. But it is an emergency here, which has been pointed out to you and just simply extending the highway and bringing the bottleneck further east doesn't solve the problem. Thank you.

The questions: the full meeting

Subscribe to Current Insider Membership to read the rest.