It is time to move the Kamloops East (Valleyview) section of the Trans Canada Highway to the Valleyview bluffs as was originally intended.

The purpose of the Trans-Canada Highway is “a continuous road that allows vehicle travel across Canada.”  That is surely not the case along the stretch through Valleyview, east of Kamloops.  In that roughly 8.5km distance between Battle Street and Dallas Drive, a driver encounters 6 traffic lights.  The freeway heading eastward comes to a crawl while traffic heading westward into town is at a constant stop and go. Vehicles exiting and entering the highway and passing through the Valleyview Drive frontage road risk fender benders and worse. Drivers are becoming more impatient and pedestrians are at massive risk. 

Given the massive increase in development east of Kamloops in Juniper, Orchards Walk in Dallas, in Barnhartvale, and proposed at Pineridge, the risk is only escalating. September alone saw 2 fatalities which caused massive delays to drivers trying to navigate a way into and out of town; the September 21 fatality saw delays of up to 3 hours and resulted in another minor accident by Lafarge. When Juniper/Valleyview caught fire July 1, residents could not get out of Juniper in a timely fashion, in part because it was impossible to allow that many residents on the highway due to the traffic lights and lack of actual on-ramp. Unfortunately given the proximity of the railway, MOTI is hard-pressed to put in much needed overpasses to access and exit the existing highway.

There is a solution. It is time relocate this section of the Trans Canada Highway to the bluffs as was originally intended and it needs to be done before property development in Juniper and Valleyview prevents it completely. Kelowna is the perfect example of failing to plan accordingly when they went through this same type of growth 20 years ago. Our City is booming and population counts have exceeded expectations. More people = more congestion = more risk.

Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a major multi-person fatality incident for the appropriate infrastructure to be built, as it did in the 1970’s when the TCH was constructed in its existing location and traffic routed off of Columbia Street and the downtown core.  Businesses fought the change then, as Valleyview Drive businesses did last time the relocation was proposed. Ultimately the safety of the thousands of people who drive that stretch of road everyday are more important and this policy of reactive infrastructure planning needs to stop. Something needs to change now.