It can't come too soon. I cringe at the thought of the 4:30 pm drive home from work in the daily traffic jam.

Intersting....building the bridge to match the approaches instead of the other way around.... that ought o be more costly or is it?
I still think we need a dangerous goods route that goes around the city and that way this bridge really isn't needed as the traffic can take an alternate route throught the city....bye bye big trucks ....but as that is not about to happen until the unthinkable happens...so...go bridge go

I hope one of these days they will paint the existing bridge. A nice bright primary colour would do.

http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=330229857&size=m

Unless this bridge is going to reroute traffic through South Fort George on Queensway, or to 16 West via Ferry all it will do is expedite the traffic to the intersection of Highway 97 and 16. This intersection all ready has delayed left turn signals, so guess what.

The traffic jam will be at 97 and 16 instead of at the scale and you will have solved nothing.

stop crying about the traffic jam go live in van and see traffic jams .... we have it easy here

they are moving the scale house very soon

So sorry, FRNK has spoken. No more complaining about things that bother you as somewhere else in the world it's worse.

Major Progress? When did land clearing become major progress?

Serious landclearing became progress when the hunter/gatherers discovered they would not have to hunt for game or fish or gather berries if they started growing plants on patches of cleared ground. It think that takes us back about 6 to 10 thousand years.

We've been clearing land ever since to accommodate the phenomenal rise in population the perfection of aqgriculture gave us.

The First Nations had it all figured out a long time ago - "forget the Europeans and Asians, they will be the death of all of us yet."

:-)

woo hoo major progress ha!!
that isnt major progress as far as i am concerned, unless, you were a snail. Mind you the Dept, of highways, and city hall get work done at about the same pace as a snail. This city is so far behind the times as compared to some other major centers, look at Kamloops they got a freeway, overpasses interchages etc. Kelowna and Kamloops bot attract big business, But really as far as the bc gov't is concerned there is no BC beyond Hope, wait until the big one strikes, then i guess in gov't eyes there will be no bc. also what a crock moving bc forward for 2010 haha most of the transportation dollars is spent downsouth, we will never see the highway twined ohh the Cariboo Connector

Ruez when west fraser buys out canfor you can stop crying about the traffic you will not have a job ..... so amen to west fraser

I could have sworn one has to go through Hope to drive to both Kelowna and Kamloops; at least the direct way ... :-)

Bennett bridge under construction ...

http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/WilliamRBennettbridge/cam.htm

Maybe we will get a camera here as well???

Kamloops is on the Transcanada highway. The Yellowhead is of lesser importance.

I believe the new Bennett bridge will also be feeding into a new bypass of Kelowna.

FRNK I think it's time you stepped away from your computer if you are so bitter that you would wish me unemployed because of comments I said about you.

FRNK I think it's time you stepped away from your computer if you are so bitter that you would wish me unemployed because of comments I said about you.

FRNK. I am fully aware of the traffic jams in Vancouver and elsewhere in the world. If you read my post correctly you will see that what I was saying is that the Traffic on Highway 97 is jammed at the light at the South Scale.

Once you twin this bridge the traffic will be able to move across the bride non-stop at least one lane, and the traffic will then jam up at Highway 97 and 16. So in effect you havent solved the problem of traffic congestion, all you have done is move it down the road.

If this turns out to be the case then we should have never twinned the bridge and wasted 25+ Million dollars. We would have been better off to move the scale and regulate the light.

Have a nice day.

I sure hope they don't find any native artifacts in the ground on that side of the river......just keep it quiet if they do...we need a twinned bridge more than another archealogical dig......it will only delay things....

Lets not go there Imorg..... there are enough problems there already... you are entitled to your opinion however...

Prince George should be in city planning text books: How not to plan a city...

"Once you twin this bridge the traffic will be able to move across the bride non-stop at least one lane, and the traffic will then jam up at Highway 97 and 16"

And then we will create an underpass/overpass there ...

An attempt at identifying the current state of highways going through our city street grid with and without grade intersections.

Hwy 97 - Existing grade separations (all are partial/controlled 4 way access)
• Continental
• Ferry/Queensway
• Upland (no direct access)
• Massey
• River Road

Hwy 97 – major intersections without grade separation
• Hwy 16
• 22nd
• 15th
• 10th
• 5th
• Austin Rd

Hwy 16 - major intersections without grade separation
• Hwy 97
• Ferry
• Cowart Rd
• Domano/Tyner
• Westgate

If you add all the HWY intesecgtions up and say on average a $10 million project per intersection, there is about $100 million sitting there for which the province, and in part the feds with respect to Hwy 16, are responsible for.

So, waht have we been doing to lobby our MLAs and MPs to get some money into the city over the next 10 years to improve our infrastructure.

Perhaps the approach should be to take that money and put it into a bypass system for both routes and let the city contend with grade separations.

Then again, due to the nature of the north, we may be faced without much of a reduction of the 97 movements through the city and the bypass becoming a white elephant. In that case, it is time to depress 97 from the Fraser to the Nechako.

Does anyone know who is paying for the archaelogical dig? Are the taxpayers or some museum perhaps? I think it is going to be an immense cost just to dig up some moose bones.

Duffer. Be glad you are not living in some part of the world which cherishes its heritage more than Canada, especially the west of Canada does.

Whatever is being spent on the dig is a drop in the bucket compared to what other countries will spend on something like that.

One of the most frequent times when one will discover an archaeological site in locations which have and had settlements is when something is being constructed. Thus, halting or slowing down construction for years and diverting construction to accommodate any major find is quite normal news serving more to re-connect people to their community’s past than to bitch about costs and who is paying for it.

So, they may find some charcoal with some bones from a fire pit in a village from 6,000 years ago, or a tiled floor from a Roman house some 2000 years ago, or they may even live in a house which has been refurbished a dozen times or more since it was first built when Shakespeare was writing Hamlet.

The link is to a recent find in Cologne, Germany, where they are building a 4 km US$1billion subway line. Among the things they discovered is a tablet which was an offer to a god. There are strict laws about construction projects in areas which are of potential archaeological value. They are spending 20% of the construction cost on archaeological digs in the construction site. So, for a $30+ million project, we could be spending $6 million at that rate.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/01/21/railway_construction_unearths_ancient_artifacts_in_germany

Look at the economics. Whatever the amount of money, it will likely be coming into the community from the feds and/or the province. Our tax money returned to the community and given to people to live and spend in the community. Even if some are outside consultants, they are spending money while they are living in the community to oversee the project.

If, on the other hand, we spend money on goods produced outside the community, be it TVs or Hummers or oranges, we send money earned here outside of the community. We need to learn how to replace imports. Doing more things locally which can only be done locally is one such import replacement.

So, I hope they take their time and dig up tons of soil.

It would be nice to hear a bit more about what is actually going on, to learn how they go about digs like that and the kinds of things they might be finding, if anything.

Here is an overview of the article about those who populated the eastern shore of North America before the Brits landed 400+ years ago. Whites were not here yet at that time, but the local First Nations were.

I, for one, would like to know a bit more about that time and I love the fact that we can bring money from outside in to do so rather than sending money away from here.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/jamestown/?fs=www7.nationalgeographic.com

On the west coast, south of us, a similar situation with a rapid transit line ....

[url]http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002190790_raildig26m.html[url]

Owl. If this dig is so important, then how come they did absolutely no digging when they built the original Simon Fraser Bridge. I guess they did not notice any bones around at that time.

You might have had some aboriginal people living in the area of the dig in years gone by, however if you look at the lay of the land, it is pretty obvious that it is far from the river and was probably not used much.

The natives in years gone by spent most of their time on the flat lands below the Graveyard, where they camped, and fished. If one wanted to find some archeology treasures then thats where they should be looking. They will have a bit of a problem however because this site has been built over with Trailer Courts, and the Citys Sewer Processing Plant. There are other areas that would be more appropriate to locate artifacts, such as the Fort George Park, etc;

I dont expect they will come up with much at the present location.

Palopu .. I do not know enough about the location and what information may be there with respect to past use.

I also do not know what the road/bridge alignment will look like. It looks now like the new span will be built to the north of the existing span. Perhaps they were looking south at one time and they began digging since the site may be disrupted. Perhaps it is only coincidental that the dig is there and it may not be in the way of construction at all.

The Heritage Conservation Act, however, does spell out that:

14 (4) The minister may order that a heritage inspection or heritage investigation be conducted if the minister considers that any one or more of the following apply:
(a) land may contain a heritage site or heritage object protected under section 13;
(d) property that may have heritage value, or land that may include heritage property, may be subject to alteration by natural or human causes.

The other sites you speak of are no doubt more likely to uncover something both from First Nations as well as European explorers/settlers, especially those removed from annual floods. However, at the moment there is no development there, other than the museum at one time.

All that happened before the present Act covering such matters and treaty negotiations which likely contain some intent to strengthen the care taken to inspect and preserve anything found.

I can't day this too often - times change.