Thats it? from Quesnel only? I wonder why it starts there? Probably because of the Quesnel River bridge and Quesnel's 1800's Front Street. How about a bypass around Quesnel that would make sense.

Why is Quesnel afraid of the bypass. it is just going to give the city a bigger tax base and more investments. Small town thinking, or a group of greedy old timers.

Front street in Quesnel is insane with transport truck traffic. A bypass should have been built (with access to 2 mile flats) years ago.

Agreed. Quesnel is the worst city to drive through on Hwy 97.

Another vote for the bypass from me too!!

I agree Quesnel needs a bypass very tight on front street

if the city of Quesnel does not want it, than the Ministry of Highways, should just build it. MoTh maintains hwy97 anyway, so what if the city is disappointed, they have bucked it long enough, lets move forward.

New type of bridges, not the traditional drive thru a truss design.

Whats your hurry. You can drive through Quesnel to anyplace you are going in less than 10 Minutes. Give it a break.

This BS about spending $135 Million on the Pine Pass is beyond beleif.

There is only one place between Quesnel and Dawson Creek that would do any Fabricating etc; and that would be Prince George. The rest of the country is desolate wasteland.

One should keep in mind that it is only the High Wide loads that are restricted from Prince George to Dawson Creek. So the question is how much of the .7 of 1% is Dimensional Loads. In other words how much could we supply right now, and better still how much are we supplying right now.

This Highways was quite busy until they pushed highway 16 through Mcbride to Edmonton Alta.

With the additional taxes of $700,000.00 per year it would only take 192 years to get your money back.

If you want to call this project a make work project then call it that, but dont try and sell it as a **business plan**

By there own admission there is not enough traffic on this Highway to warrant any upgrades for safety issues.

To spend $135 Million to create (maybe) 84 full time jobs is ludicrous.

Palopu, do you work in the repair or manufacuring for heavy industry here? I do. Here this side of the rocks(Pine Pass) we get hardly anything from our own B.C. industry on the other side. We try and try but the ease of going to Alberta for northern B.C. industries cripples us. Transportation to and from the Peace region is the major factor. We can compete and have the infrastucture, if we can only get work transported to here. Most of the oil/gas patch work is HUGE and is not capable of making it thru the pass. Alberta allows huge industial loads on their superior highways(paid by oil) and we need to upgrade roads and remove some hauling restrictions. Then we will easily capture a significant share of work from OUR OWN PROVINCE.

Would everyone like to instead divert this $135million to the sea to sky highway for next Feb's party? Or have something meaningful for the north?

They may not have enough traffic to justify it for safety purposes but I would still like the bloody sharp curves in the park cleaned up. Jeez! Have you hit the heaves on that last hairpin? I was talking to a couple of alaskans and they were still complaining about that part of the road, a week after they hit it.

Dont forget how many Americans spent money in Alberta on the way to Dawson Creek in their giant RVs. Obviously BC is a far more scenic route, but the Pass has a bad reputation. I guarantee that there would be big benefits for cities and towns along the entire north/south corridor if we could offer a route through beautiful BC that was at least reasonable to navigate.

I would venture to say that the Rockies are FAR more scenic than the interior of BC.

135 million dollars, but this is just a reannouncement for some of the projects. The Carriboo connector project would have taken care of the projects south of PG.

We do miss out on a lot of work in the north, mainly because of the Pine Pass. It will not take much to fix it up either, so, why not. Maybe we can start supplying products northwards by Prince George. We have Northern Steel, Farr Fab, Linden, Bid etc. that would love to get some of that action up there. I am pretty sure these shops are idle right now, so why not.

Sometimes, we just have to rely on government to provide the infrastructure for private industry to make money and pay taxes. In the end of it all, the government will always get there money back. Remember, we are taxed at a 50% rate. The government in one form or another will get it all back in two years.
The olympics, was just an excuse to get the ball rolling. The governments have got there money back through taxation a long time ago.

Geez, the pine pass today is so much better than it was twenty five years ago, I can only marvel at how quickly I am at Chetwynd after leaving PG. The rough spots and few bad curves are so much like the rest of the roads in central and northern B.C. that I forget to complain ( imagine that )
metalman.

A few questions that I have on this:

- Are improvements to the Pass going to stop businesses from going to Grande Prairie and Edmonton anyway?
- For the handful of businesses that this may benefit, is it worth spending 135 million dollars for the improvements? Why wouldn't these same businesses just set up operations in the Peace if these opportunities were so lucrative?
- How does the economic payback argument work if in 10, 15 or 20 years, oil and gas exploration plummets as a result of green technology or alternate forms of energy?

Good questions NMG. If we have $135 Million to throw around, then lets load it in a truck, take it to MacKenzie, dump it in front of City Hall and tell them to get that pulp mill running and create 500 jobs.

That would be a much better expenditure, than pissing it away on a few bridges and overpasses, without any gaurantee of any additional work.

Nanaimo was dead against a bypass for years,figuring it would hurt business.
Well, as we all know the bypass came with the new island highway, with plenty of access of the highway and into the city core.
And it didn't hurt them one damn bit and in fact, to see it now, it would seem it actually helped them in terms of expanding the city and business.
A by-pass around Quesnel would be a blessing!

The word bypass by its very nature means to go around. The Coquihalla bypassed Cache Creek and killed it, along with a lot of other small towns.

Highway 16 East to Edmonton killed off business on the Hart Highway. There are many instances where bypasses kill off business.

Take another 10 minutes out of your life and enjoy a scenic ride through downtown Quesnel.

Free enterprise enabling infrastructure is always good IMO.

"If we have $135 Million to throw around, then lets load it in a truck, take it to MacKenzie, dump it in front of City Hall and tell them to get that pulp mill running and create 500 jobs."

Two words: Skeena Cellulose.

I agree MrPG, however it would generate more work in the short term than we would ever get from this Pine Pass fiasco.

In any event the Province is broke so its not likely that this project will ever get off the ground.