Friday, Oct. 6, 2023 edition - A highway grilling for provincial officials

Friday, Oct. 6, 2023 | ☀️ High 24C

Good morning!

This weekend is Thanksgiving. Which means we get to be either thankful for not having to work on Monday, or thankful for the people manning the counters at the store when we realize we don’t have enough carrots. (It also means no newsletter on Monday.) There are a million things to be thankful for. I’m thankful for everyone who subscribes and makes this worth doing! I’m doubly thankful for the members who financially allow this to keep going. You can become a member here to upgrade how thankful I am for you. I’ve included one more thing I’m thankful for in our weekend edition for Insider members.

But I also want to hear from you, whether you’re an Insider member or a regular subscriber. What are you thankful for in our region? Tell us about a person, organization, place, or thing that deserves a little extra credit by filling out this super-quick form. We’ll share your thankfulness with readers in a future edition.

WORTH KNOWING

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope

⚠️ Here’s the current smoke forecast / Check the BC Wildfire Dashboard here

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

NEWS

Fraser Valley politicians grill highway officials about Trans-Canada plan

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

But that’s what happened last week when two 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.

Alternating between appreciation that the project was happening in the first place, and pessimism that it will be completed in the next decade, they called for the ministry to look for quick fixes that could improve traffic in the short-term.

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

• Today, Tyler writes about new details about the highway widening project—including how far the widening will reach into Chilliwack, the construction of sound walls, the expropriation of property, and changes to Abbotsford and Langley interchanges. We also have the comments from skeptical and curious local politicians.

• You can watch the presentation for yourself here.

Need to know

🏥 The number of Canadians giving up and leaving emergency rooms has grown fivefold since 2003 [CTV]

📃 Proposed legislation in BC could make drug use illegal in most public spaces, walking back decriminalization [Vancouver Sun]

🤑 A sale of industrial land valued at more than $100 million marked the largest such transaction in Chilliwack’s history [Chilliwack Progress]

🧑‍✈️ The Abbotsford International Airport is expecting 2003 will be its most successful year yet [City of Abbotsford]

🍊 Chilliwack’s Orange Theory Fitness location has closed permanently [Fraser Valley Today]

📈 Homelessness in Langley increased by 12% in the last three years [Langley Advance Times]

🚨 A house fire in Mission is believed to have been intentionally set [Mission Record]

👨‍🏫 The Abbotsford School District thanked its 1,500 teachers on World Teacher’s Day yesterday [Abbotsford News]

🏃‍♂️ A Chilliwack realtor is running from Vancouver to Chilliwack to raise money for BC Children’s Hospital after his final cancer check-up [Fraser Valley Today]

🚓 An Abbotsford driver rammed a police car in an attempt to evade arrest [Abbotsford News]

The Agenda

FVRD eyes gaps in flood protections

Rural dikes, sewer systems, and other flood protection systems will soon be going under the microscope. The Fraser Valley Regional District will spend around $200,000 of the province’s money to hire a private company to analyze the shortfalls of local flood protection infrastructure.

The “gap analysis” will consider whether a variety of flood protection infrastructure will stand up to a future flood and climate change, or whether they’ll need to be rebuilt or improved.

Among the locations up for inspection are berms and tank basins near the Baker Trails Village mobile home park in the Chilliwack River Valley, the Cascade-Carrat dikes north of Hatzic Lake, and dikes and sediment basins at Frost Creek near Cultus Lake.

The FVRD says it will also be finally creating a regional strategy for flood protection within its borders.

Fraser Valley Writers Festival announces featured authors

The Fraser Valley Writers Festival has announced the 10 authors who will be speaking and running workshops at the annual festival in early November. Two workshops will be held at 1:30, with panel discussions and keynote speakers to follow.

The authors speaking will be:

• Ali Blythe

• andrea bennett

• Tara Sidhoo Fraser

• Darrel J. McLeod

• Frances Peck

• Bradley Peters

• Brandi Bird

• Brandon Reid

• Russel Thornton

• Lorna Crozier

Held at UFV’s Abbotsford campus, the free festival will run on Nov. 4 in room 101.

Things to do

🎸 Concert: Matthew Good performs at Mission’s Clarke Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 7 during his solo acoustic tour. Tickets online.

🏒 Hockey: The Langley Rivermen play the Vernon Vipers at the George Preston Arena in Langley tonight, Friday, Oct. 6. More details online.

🦃 Old-fashioned Thanksgiving: Spend part of your Thanksgiving weekend at the Kilby Historic Site on Saturday, Oct. 7 or Sunday, Oct. 8 to experience the holiday as it was celebrated in the early 20th century. More details online.

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