Deadly corner a longtime concern
The Highway 97 corner where a motorcyclist died has long been eyed for safety improvements by the Ministry of Transportation.
But few upgrades, beyond additional signage, have been undertaken because the intersection’s future is bound up in the larger and unresolved question of what will happen to the highway through Peachland.
Two floral tributes have been placed at the corner of Highway 97 and Hardy Street where the motorcyclist died Saturday afternoon after colliding with a vehicle.
“I wish they’d hurry up and do something with that corner because it’s been bad for a long time,” a resident of a nearby mobile home park who didn’t want to be identified said Monday morning.
“Every time you hear brakes squeal, you sort of tense up for a second because you expect there to be a loud crash right afterward,” the resident said.
Police said a red Chevrolet pickup entered Highway 97 from Hardy Street and collided with a motorcycle, ridden by a man in his 40s. The pickup driver suffered minor injuries. Police are seeking witnesses.
The highway is only two lanes through Peachland, making it the only such stretch from north of Vernon to south of Penticton.
There is no possible detour where it intersects with Hardy Street, so a serious crash at the corner shuts down all highway traffic for hours, as it did on the weekend.
A multi-vehicle crash last December shut the highway for four hours.
While Hardy Street has no exit, it serves the trailer park and has more traffic now with people using it to access Hardy Falls regional park, where the annual salmon run in Peachland Creek is a popular attraction.
Between 2015 and this spring, there were 14 crashes at the intersection, according to ICBC, nine of which involved injuries. That only makes it the ninth most dangerous corner in the town.
However, northbound highway vehicle speeds tend to be high because the corner is at the bottom of a long hill, and sightlines for vehicles entering from Hardy Street are limited somewhat by a sharp curve in the highway’s alignment.
“It is a very dangerous intersection. We’ve had so many head-ons, roll-overs, and vehicles into the lake right there,” said Don Wilson, Peachland’s fire chief from 1980 to 2004 and a town councillor between 1977 and 1996.
“People on the highway hit the corner too fast, and the drivers coming out of Hardy Street don’t have enough time to accelerate so you’ve got a bad situation right there,” said Wilson, who lives near the corner.
In 1988, Wilson says, the Ministry of Transportation unveiled a plan to smooth out the sharp corner by realigning the highway through the trailer park and widening the road to four lanes at the same time.
But the project was never undertaken. For years, the ministry has been studying whether to widen the highway to four lanes or build a bypass around the town. The proposed bypass route would leave the current alignment south of Hardy Street, greatly lessening the amount of traffic using the corner.
But a decision is not imminent and transportation officials say that, based on current traffic volumes, neither the highway widening or bypass would be necessary until 2040.