The Malahat is getting safer, one piece at a time. But sooner or later, the province will have to wrestle with the huge problem of what to do with the highway where it passes through Goldstream Provincial Park.
Transportation Minister Todd Stone announced last week that a five-kilometre section of the Malahat will be upgraded, starting next year. The $34-million project will include expanding the highway to four lanes through Malahat Village and adding three kilometres of median barriers.
鈥淭his will mean a safer drive, more passing opportunities, better reliability and reduced travel times and delays,鈥� Stone said.
Malahat Volunteer Fire Department Chief Rob Patterson said statistics show that barriers save lives. Beyond the statistics, he speaks from personal experience. It was on that stretch of highway last November that a truck crossed the centre line and smashed into an oncoming car, killing the car鈥檚 driver. He said at the time that a barrier would have prevented that death and he sticks by that assessment.
鈥淓very one of my team members feels exactly the same way,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey saw the scene; they saw the crash. If there had been barricades there, there鈥檚 no way in hell that gentleman would not be with us now.鈥�
The province has been widening the highway and installing barriers one segment at a time. Stone says that when the latest project is completed, sometime in 2018, 65 per cent of the corridor will have a median barrier.
Patterson, who is witness to almost every bad thing that happens on the Malahat, wants the province to finish the entire corridor from one end to the other.
鈥淭win it, divide it, make it safe,鈥� he said.
In an ideal world, that鈥檚 what should happen. The Malahat corridor is, after all, a section of the Trans-sa国际传媒 Highway. More important, it is the link between the capital region and the rest of Vancouver Island, the main land route in and out of Victoria.
The province, with the help of some federal funding, has been making it better, and will likely continue to chip away at the problem. But when it comes to solving the bottleneck at Goldstream Provincial Park, it will take more than chipping to create a continuous four-lane, median-equipped highway.
It would unthinkable to widen the highway toward the Goldstream River. That would mean removing massive trees that are hundreds of years old and infringing on valuable salmon habitat.
Widening the road on the other side would involve carving away high, sheer cliffs, moving massive amounts of rock, not to mention massive amounts of money. But that might eventually be the only choice, given that rerouting the highway isn鈥檛 possible.
Other solutions have been floated 鈥� a bridge across Finlayson Arm, a road through the Sooke Hills wilderness, turning the E&N railbed into a southbound highway lane 鈥� but those proposals present even greater challenges than widening the current route.
Traffic volumes on the Malahat will only continue to grow. The upgrades announced last week are most welcome, but the province should continue to look ahead, planning and brainstorming about what to do to keep traffic moving smoothly on the Island鈥檚 most important highway, especially the Goldstream section.
