Pleasant Valley Road Getting Upgrade

The Township of Spallumcheen has been trying for over two and a half years to get Provincial funding to upgrade Pleasant Valley Road.

It has now been given a $3-million dollar Small Community’s Grant to cover the majority of the cost for the project.

Mayor Janice Brown says construction will get underway in 2018.

“We did have it on our plan for this year, but we hadn’t heard if we got it, so we moved it to next year. We’ve already gone out to tender because we have to come up with our own share. The grant is for $3.82 million and the project is $4.06 million.”

The work will go from the Highway 97 turnoff by the industrial park all the way to the City of Armstrong boundary.

“It’s going to definitely be wider. It’s not going to be four-lane. I do not believe we are going to have sidewalks and street lights because traffic will be moving too fast.”

Upgrades were urgently needed because Pleasant Valley Road is one of the busiest in the municipality. Brown says a counter found there were about a thousand vehicles a day on the roadway.

“There’s 800 employees in the little industrial park there, so if you get every one of them coming and going everyday, plus the trucks hauling in and out of there, you do have a lot of people coming and going.”