Local leaders continue to push the provincial transport Ministry on an alternate route out of Port Alberni, but BC’s bureaucrats are looking at emergency routes only.
At yesterday’s meeting of the ACRD’s Transportation Advisory Committee, Ministry’s Island District Manager Michael Pearson said the province has restored the Angel Rock area to pre-fire conditions and they’re not looking at doing much more.
“We’ve looked at an Angel Rock project in the past to take off the nose of Angel Rock,” he said. “It’s an extremely expensive project. It would require a lot of detours and closures – the same stuff we saw this summer – for a huge price tag with very little benefit. We’re going to look at doing minor widening to get a wider shoulder again, but at this point to bring it to a straighter alignment and to do that Angel Rock project is tens of millions of dollars and at the end of the day you’ll still have a 2-lane highway with a shoulder, so question whether it’s worth that investment.”
Pearson said the Province is looking at establishing an emergency route out of the Alberni Valley, but not an alternate highway.
Horne Lake, Comox Main and Bamfield Road routes are all part of the current study.
Local businessman John McNabb spoke out against the recent installation of avalanche gates.
“Putting those gates up in the mind of my customers is a trigger that says ‘I can maybe get in, but I might not get out, or maybe I just can’t get in’, he said. “The location of them or even them being there when the Ministry says the highway is as safe as it ever was or maybe safer. It didn’t have gates before. Why does it have gates now?”
Pearson said the gates will save money on flaggers if there is an avalanche or a bad accident in the Cameron Lake corridor.
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