No shortage of highway options for Enderby

Oct 25, 2019 | 2:29 PM

It could be years before anything is done — but at least the B.C. government is moving ahead with the process.

That’s the comment of Enderby’s mayor after an open house was held by the Ministry of Transportation to review options for improvements to Highway 97A through the city of about 3,000 residents.

“In all of our discussions with Highways, all these years where they’ve just ignored it, they’ve finally come along and said ‘Wow, there is some issues here,'” Greg McCune told Vernon Matters.

McCune called the turnout “great,” estimating at least 600 people over the two-and a half hour drop-in session.

“At 5 o’ clock it was just packed. They had about a dozen boards set-up around the outside that showed the timeline of events, which pretty much people couldn’t even get to because there was too many people.”

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McCune says the turnout shows how big an issue it is, adding everyone is frustrated with what has gone from being a summer issue, to a 10-month-a-year problem of clogged highway traffic.

“If you’re a local person, yes, you can get to the light to access the highway, and figure out how to navigate, but when you add other people, and you’re trying to get to a spot and there’s a person trying to make a left-hand turn that’s going to take them upwards of a half an hour, it’s pretty frustrating.”

The mayor says the frustration causes drivers to “gamble” and take chances.

“Just north of Enderby, the [is a high] level of accidents there from people that have come up the valley on mostly four lanes, and now they get to this bottleneck that takes them 10 to 15 minutes to get through Enderby. Now they see a passing lane and they go, ‘What a wonderful place to make gain some time,’ so we’re seeing multiple head-ons, multiple fatalities, so there is really nothing good about the traffic through town.”

He says at the peak of the summer it can take vehicles 15 minutes to get through the city, with over 22,000 vehicles a day.

“So what happens is, (a), you can’t access the highway unless you’re at a light, so it forces everybody to either Hubert or Mill Avenue, which then forces everybody to drive many, many blocks through town to get to those intersections.”

McCune says the Transportation Ministry has ruled against using a bypass as it’s too expensive and not enough traffic.

“For example on the western slope, they could have come off around Armstrong and on through to Salmon Arm, but for that expense, their data shows they wouldn’t event get one out of every four travellers to take that route. That’s a lot of money to spend to not have a lot of traffic on that road.”

McCune says an eastern bypass would need three bridges, be very expensive, and affect lots of farmland.

That leaves about 12 other options which the ministry will continue to get input on, with a short list by next year.

“It is a lot, but this is the process. They want to get people’s feedback and see what values and concerns people have and then they’ll go back to the drawing board.”

McCune says the ministry plans to get the options down to a “workable model” by next year.

Click here for more the Ministry of Transportation options presented at the open house.

by Pete McIntyre

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