Bear Lake Calls For Better Highway Maintenance
Thursday, January 10, 2013 @ 8:46 AM
Prince George, B.C.- The maintenance of Highway 97 north of the City of Prince George was front and centre at a recent meeting involving members of the Board of the Regional District of Fraser Fort George and the Regional Office of the Ministry of Transportation.
At issue was the level of maintenance of Highway 97 between Prince George and Bear Lake.
Regional District Director, Terry Burgess, says he is very concerned about the level of maintenance on the highway especially as it approaches Bear Lake. “ I just told the Ministry people what I see and what my people see, the straightaways are not sanded. They are slippery, very slippery, so it’s pretty serious.”
The Regional Manager for the Ministry of Transportation, Ron Marshall, says the contractors are meeting the maintenance standards for the highway. The standards outline the time frame for clearing snow and ice from the highway as well as outline the size of aggregate to be used on icy surfaces.
Specifically, the standards require the contractor to “remove snow on the full width of the travelled lanes to ensure that accumulations remain below the maximum allowable accumulations”. Those maximum allowable accumulations are:
- 4.0 centimetres on a class “A” highway, which is the class given Highway 97 from the City limits to about the Salmon River bridge.
- 6.0 centimetres on a class “B” highway which is the class given Highway 97 through Bear Lake.
The standards of maintenance also outline that “plowing of slush and removal of broken compact snow from the Travelled Lanes that is unsafe must be completed within the following time frames”:
“A” class highway 90 minutes
“B” class highway 2 hours.
Director Burgess doesn’t agree that the work being done is enough “The Standards were written in 1994, and the way I read the standards, it says the straightaways should be sanded. They should be sanded on patrol or when plowing the snow off the roads. They define slippery as anything that increases stopping distance from dry weather stopping.” Burgess was a Senior area manager with highways in the mid 90’s and is confident in his assessment “I don’t think they are meeting the standard.”
Burgess says he has two petitions and letters from people in the region who feel no one is listening to their concerns.
One of those letters is from the Chief and Deputy Chief of the Bear Lake Fire Department who sent a letter to the Regional District in late November expressing their concerns:
“We the community here in Bear Lake would like to address the highway maintenance of our area.
The maintenance over the last 2 years has deteriorated to the point of dangerous driving conditions. We are noticing the gaps in work shifts are when the road conditions are most vulnerable. Our weather conditions have a nature very unlike Prince George and are extremely unpredictable.
Please acknowledge our area to Improve our road maintenance.
Our Fire and Ambulance Services must be able to respond as safely as possible at any time of day or night.”
Director Burgess says the petitions and letters will now be forwarded to the Minister of Transportation. He says if the current standards are being met, then the standards need to be changed and improved.
Comments
The level of winter maintenance has been declining since privatization.
It costs money to do it correctly, but little to do it incorrectly.
Contractors are in it for the money.
They have the feeling that no one is listening to thier concerns.
Join the club. It seems **not listening** is the order of the day for BC Politicians, whether if be Federal, Provincial, Municipal, or Regional. They go through the motion of listening, however at the same time they are hoping you will go away and quit bothering them.
We need more responsibility from our Governments, and less civil service stonewalling.
Have a nice day.
Not defending politicians, but it’s pretty tough to listen when 90% of what they hear is just noise. If people were a little less about ** the world revolves around me me me ** and more about thinking what they can do to help their own lives and communities.
One of the ways to help their own communities is to agree to become organized, pay money into a common system, hire some people to do the work for the common good and set up a system to monitor the work for effectivene4ss and efficiency.
We have gone beyond the sytsem of everyone for themselves.
So, it seems to me, JB, that we have such systems in place but, with the vast improvements of communications which allows people access to far more information than they used to have, including the information which used to be hidden in “suggestion boxes”, we have so far not been able to change the mindset of “you hired me to do the job, so let me do it” of the people we hire and the mindset of those who hired them which goes something like “I am the client; what part of that do you not understand. So lets talk about each others needs and get the job done.”
BTW, the conversation which our ilustrious Mayor has proposed during her campaing seems to me to be rather one sided. I do not think she is capable of having a conversation where people come together and reach consensus.
gus: “I do not think she is capable of having a conversation where people come together and reach consensus.”
I can’t put all the fault on the Mayor for that. People can’t reach consensus on how many days of the week there are, let alone more complex issues.
gus: “So, it seems to me, JB, that we have such systems in place but, with the vast improvements of communications which allows people access to far more information than they used to have, including the information which used to be hidden in “suggestion boxes”…
Yup, there are just more avenues for people to contribute to the noise.
Highway west out of PG was very icy yesterday afternoon during rush hour
How about putting ICBC in charge of highway maintenance. I think they would have an interest in seeing less accidents
asphalt: “How about putting ICBC in charge of highway maintenance.”
You’re kidding, I hope.
What a surprise! YRB territory too.
For years, I have been constantly amazed at the lack of service on our highways where YRB has the contract. Ice, snow, lack of plowing sand and salt, no one seems to care less. People complain, but nothing ever gets done. I’ve gone to my MLA, transportation and highways, absolutely squat is done. Perhaps Bear Lake community is going in the right direction, really hope so because the highways around PG are the worst.
Its awesome once you get out of their contract zone. You go from ice and snow to bare and good driving conditions. I don’t blame the workers, lot of good people there, but the ministry has to take the contractor to task, hopefully before anyone else dies.
vanderhoof yrb does better job than pg– one can usually notice improved road conditions west of clucuz lake.
There was just an accident about a month ago where a semi hit a service truck south of Bear Lake, neither of whom could stop due to the ice. It was on a straight away with an intersecting road, these areas should be heavily sanded IMO. I used to use that intersection in my survey work and even when the mill was in operation the highway was super icy with no hope in hell of stopping or getting going quick.
A similar area of highway is also from McBride to the border. I started spinning at less than highway speeds climbing a gradual hill after a bridge, luckily the truck was not a posi. At the top of the hill I got out to lock the hubs and landed flat on my butt. Would have been a great place to lace up the skates
I was also going to mention that if it had been Canfor’s shift bus rather than a flatbed in the accident there would probably be some type of inquiry going on (but my finger was a fraction of a second quicker than my brain on the ‘Post Comment’)
On a positive note, the highway from PG to Mackenzie junction is great because the corners are wide and predictable, no major hills to worry about, and the shoulders are wide, and visibility is generally great everywhere. A well built highway for a two lane road… YRB maintenance around Salmon Valley is atrocious though.
What scares me sometimes is the road North of the Pine Pass to Chetwynd… now that is a scary road sometimes… no shoulder what so ever and so narrow at times two vehicles can swap paint as they pass… then the drop offs are huge and no barrier to indicate when one has gone too far….
As always, people need to drive to the conditions of the road and use appropriate winter tires. Roads get slippery in the middle of winter. We all know this. Not driving like its summer and the road is bare and dry would go a long ways towards reducing the likelihood of an accident.
slinky and others, let’s not forget that children lost their father in that accident. I would hope that that incident would spur YRB into action but apparently not.
born: “slinky and others, let’s not forget that children lost their father in that accident. I would hope that that incident would spur YRB into action but apparently not.”
I would also hope that this spurs people to take responsibility and to slow down and drive to the conditions.
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