Parade to Briefly Close Highway 97 at Hixon
Saturday, August 20, 2016 @ 6:50 AM
Hixon, B.C. – Hixon residents are gearing up for their annual Fall Fair today.
The day long event will close Highway 97 from roughly 10 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. for the parade says organizer Corrinne Vernon.
“Then we go on to the Community Hall, we have some games for kids and adults alike. There will be exhibits, a market, a dinner at 5:30 and a dance after that.”
Vernon, who’s new in town, is hoping to try and revitalize the community event.
“It’s an annual event but for the last few years has been kind of going down the way side so we’re picking it back up and hoping to bring it back to where it was.”
Comments
At first I thought this was a delayed April 1st joke.
How in the world could a municipality close a main provincial highway for 30 minutes for a local parade?
Was the first vehicle stopped at Hixon, trying to go south. The kids hopped out and picked up candy thrown from the floats. Lots of cute kids on the floats, a passel of little goats, some horses and the entire Hixon fire department, along with a car with lights and a siren, Hixon Sherrif. The whole thing was just plain fun. They did let a Telus service truck through. There were 2 big trucks backed up and lots of cars. Small town Canada where everyone knows everyone else and celebrates being neighbours. We were on our way in less than 45 minutes, better for the experience
You know you live in the boonies when……….. A local community can disrupt travel for more travellers than the population of the town for a local event.
They’ve announced the event, so plan your travels around it accordingly.
Simple!
It is not shown on drive bc…..
What does it take to close a provincial highway?
I do not see the announcement anywhere else where the travelling public goes to get info such as this, do you?
What’s your hurry, gopg2015? You must’ve lived in large cities too long. Where everyone is always in a rush to get somewhere to do something. Most times neither really very important nor even very enjoyable.
I am not travelling. I am thinking that this is the first time in my life that I have seen that a community can close a provincial highway for that long for local parade.
Why are you even considering that I am thinking about myself. I am thinking about the unusual closure and not even having the foresight to let the MOT know. If they did, it should be on driveBC.
driveBC?? not a very reliable source! The Usk Ferry (east of Terrace) has been out of service for several days now and still is not showing as such on driveBC!
This has nothing to do with large cities. Large cities have enough alternate routes when a street closes. There are plenty of detour signs to reroute traffic. We see that all the time during summer construction season in PG.
This is something totally different. There is no detour. At least they have not indicated that there is.
This is for the travellers from south of Hixon travelling to PG for a errand, appointment etc. or someone from north of Hixon travelling to Quesnel for the same thing, meeting some or an appointment, etc.
A half hour stop when one is planning a trip of just over an hour is considerable.
Do you ever think of others, socredible?
Hopefully the traffic will not back up for too many kilometers in both directions! Hixon really needs a bypass just like Quesnel! In any case, I think they will have a great time with their community Fall Fair!
Not being petty but just curious, where is the Quesnel Bypass?
The implied word at the end of the sentence is “……. just like Quesnel DOES”
A Quesnel bypass will happen when hell freezes over. The community would likely be against it, and it would cost well into the six figure range in today’s dollars.
Sorry, that should read 8 figure range … too early in the morning…… :-(
Same as a bypass of Prince George! When hell freezes……
We had a bypass to PG. It is still called that, but no longer is. It has become the major north-west urban arterial in the city over the half century.
Getting time to build the next level. If the one which has been mapped out for some time gets built, and the city ever grows to twice the size it is, and cars or some semblance of them is still the dominant urban transportation mode, then that “bypass” too will be predominantly an urban arterial, just as the Island Highway has started to become in Nanaimo, for instance.
The alternative is create sufficient grade separations for the current “bypass” to allow speeds of 100 km/hr similar to a freeway as has been done in several US and Canadian cities, such as Ottawa.
I do not think that you are being petty! Let me explain it like this:
Hixon needs a bypass just like Quesnel, which means they both need/deserve one! The money that B.C. taxpayers pay for road construction is a goldmine! The south gets the gold and the north gets the shaft! #97 is the one and only connection going north and south! Decades of provincial governments have ignored the absolute requirement to bypass the north/south traffic around downtowns, both for safety and health/pollution reasons! In Quesnel all the traffic pollutes right beside the Hospital and senior living units! It is a completely unjustifiable neglect! The lower mainland and the Okanagan gets billions and up here we get the crumbs that are left over!
Too bad we do not have an alternative common sense respect and reality based party here in B.C. that can cut through the Gordian Knot of the two party conundrum which happily ignores reality election after election!
Thank you!
If they had mapped out a parade route along Colgrove Rd, heading south then continuing south along Lockyer Rd, The would have a parade route that is almost 1.5 km long.
It is not as if they did not have one or more routes available that avoided the highway.
So what might be some ulterior motives for this closure?
Prince George holds its parades downtown. The route Hixon has chosen is Hixon’s downtown! They have every right to do as other communities do! It is not their fault that both the downtown parade and the Fall Fair grounds are on Highway #97. If there was a #97 Bypass around downtown there would be no problem!!! The present #97 would be then just a downtown street! And that is the way it should be and should have been many decades ago!
This has to be wrong. The cost to transport trucks alone. What about carbon footprint as hundreds of vehicles idle. Then the carnage as all those vehicles jocky for road position when it’s over. All for a local parade?
This must be joke no? Anyway all is quiet on the Hixon highway cam.
I see the Hixon cam is not updating at least for me.
looks like a 15 or 16 minute interval to load new images.
Same … it states that it updates every 100 seconds or so …. they must be trying to save transmission costs for the Hixon bypass capital fund. :-)
Maybe Cinema could be next for a HWY97 closure for a parade. There are plenty of small communities along the entire length of HWY 97 that could close the highway for local parades.
Even Cache Creek does not do that.
The highway closes at Falkland for their parade also.
from the link at: vernonmorningstar.com/news/380163401.html
“There is no other parade that shuts down a major highway (97) for about 20 minutes. It’s pretty cool,” said Churchill.
So, now we can see it is the start of a competition. Which town along 97 is the “coolest”.
Actually another article has the RCMP stating the highways at Falkland was going to be shot off for 1 hour from 1pm to 2pm.
I don’t know about being the “coolest” town but if the RCMP say that the highway is going to be shot off, then Falkland is certainly the craziest town.
It is not the same thing! If they let the people in Vernon and Kamloops know that the highway through Falkland will be closed for a while they can take an alternate route if they are in a hurry!
I don’t know what everybody is griping about. It only takes two people to shut down a major highway anywhere at any time and for a lot longer than a half hour.
Just look at all the highway accidents that have closed highways, sometimes for hours for the investigative work to be done.
No advance notice of them either.
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