Patience is a virtue. On the Malahat, a necessity
Here’s the bad news: The completion date for the McKenzie interchange is being pushed from the end of 2018 to the summer of 2019.
Here’s the good news: It’s not as though the construction has really made the Trans-Canada commute any pokier. It always goes at a snail’s pace during rush hour.
Oh, if there’s one thing Vancouver Island drivers have learned as they inch over the Malahat or rot to death in the Colwood Crawl, it’s to be patient. Or fatalistic.
Except this summer, resignation turned to red-faced frustration. With motorists howling about two-hour drives from Victoria to Duncan, the Transportation Ministry this week ordered an end to constructionrelated traffic stoppages on Fridays. Did that measure help? I tried it out, driving from Victoria to Mill Bay — just enough time to contemplate the state of the narrow thread connecting the capital to the rest of Vancouver Island.
3:36 p.m. — Let’s start at the McKenzie interchange construction project.
Yes, it’s true, completion is being pushed back to mid-2019.
It comes down to accommodating environmental considerations, the concerns of nearby residents and the need to keep 85,000 vehicles flowing through the intersection each day, says Janelle Erwin, the Transportation Ministry’s deputy director for the south Island.
Oh well, we waited 30 years for them to get started, anyway. The $85-million project only got the go-ahead because of a $33-million federal contribution from a desperate-to-be-re-elected Stephen Harper in 2015.
3:45 p.m. — Smooth sailing to the Leigh Road interchange, but then it starts to get interesting, with cars braking from highway speed to a dead stop as two northbound lanes narrow to one. During times of heavy highway congestion, this is where savvy drivers duck back onto the highway after having ducked off at Millstream Road to dodge the Trans-Canada.
It might save time but, according to other motorists, there’s a pretty good chance the dodgers will burn in hell.
A 3.3-kilometre extension of the Bear Mountain Parkway, linking the north end of Leigh Road to the Bear Mountain development, is to open by mid-November. It’s expected to ease the constipation at Millstream, but will also generate its own traffic as businesses sprout around the new road. The $10-million cost of the extension is being borne by five developers.
3:49 p.m. — Traffic moves smoothly-ish again until a red light at the Westshore Parkway (BTW, the $22.5-million parkway extension linking the TransCanada to Sooke Road is supposed to be finished by this fall) and clips along nicely through Goldstream park. Until it doesn’t.
3:53 p.m. — Climbing the hill, traffic suddenly slows, not so much flowing as oozing at 7 km/h, occasionally coming to a dead stop. An exasperated voice in another vehicle can be heard shouting “Go! Go!”
4:03 p.m. — Ten minutes and less than two kilometres later, someone is pulled over with his hood up, container of antifreeze in hand. A motorcycle illegally scooting up the shoulder ducks by him.
4:10 p.m. — Half a kilometre later, two people in safety vests hand bottled water to motorists creeping past.
4:12 p.m. — It occurs that somewhere along here there used to be a sign reading “For sale: Rabbits for pets or meat.” Seemed vaguely like extortion, or at least emotional blackmail. But I digress.
4:15 p.m. — The driver in the truck in the next lane is texting. I know a guy who, constantly tempted to reach for his phone, briefly considered taking up smoking again as an alternative.
4:17 p.m. — The two northbound lanes squeeze into one at Aspen Road. It has taken 24 minutes to go the last 3.5 kilometres.
This is this summer’s flashpoint, a five-kilometre stretch where the highway is being widened from three lanes to four between here and Shawnigan Lake Road to the north. The problem is that they’ve closed one of the lanes for the duration of construction, which is to extend into next year. The idea is to give the contractor a clear space in which to work, but it means the highway is down to one lane in each direction.
That said, and given the cussing over the congestion, the ministry is taking a second look at whether it can adjust things, particularly at times when work isn’t happening. Engineers are to report back with possible alternatives soon; Erwin says that with the B.C. Day long weekend coming and Sun Fest drawing thousands to the Cowichan Valley from Aug. 3 to 6, they know the clock is ticking.
4:26 p.m. — Shawnigan Lake Road. It has taken just nine minutes to transit the five-kilometre construction zone, which isn’t bad.
After that traffic quickly accelerates to normal speed, though that’s still not fast enough for the woman in the white Grand Am who cut me off as the road narrowed at the Malahat Summit. She seemed to be in a hurry to get out of Victoria. Christy Clark? I hazarded a glance. No.
In total, it has taken 50 minutes to cover the 22.8 kilometres from McKenzie to Shawnigan Lake Road. Too long for some (two hours later, in what was supposed to be rush hour, the northbound congestion was almost gone), fine for others and a red herring to those who think the real issue is that the government should be looking further down the road, figuratively speaking, as Malahat traffic grows.
The $18.5-million road-widening work at Aspen, which began this spring, is the third phase of a bigger project. It grew out of a 2012 study that it was possible to improve Malahat capacity and safety by tweaking the existing highway route.
That disappoints those who want a Big Fix for the Malahat, something that involves more than chipping away at the sides of the road — rail, say, or a new inland highway.
Note, though, that after the ministry commissioned a 2007 engineering study of 19 alternatives to the status quo, the resulting report systematically burst every balloon. Every suggestion was deemed either pie-in-the-sky or financially, environmentally and politically unpalatable.
Punching new roads through Goldstream park or the Sooke Hills wilderness reserve would cost up to $400 million and trigger an environmental battle that would make the Clayoquot War in the Woods look like Woodstock by comparison.
Commuter rail? Not enough capacity to make a difference, and way too expensive: Assuming an $11 one-way fare from Duncan, the government subsidy would be up to $139 per trip.
Mill Bay ferry? It holds just 16 cars and takes an hour and 10 minutes to putt-putt to Brentwood Bay and back.
Building a bridge — a fourkilometre, multi-span link between Mill Bay and the northern Saanich Peninsula or a 1.4-kilometre crossing between Bamberton and the Highlands — was rejected, in part because of a cost estimated at $700 million to $1.2 billion.
Double-decking the highway through Goldstream was seen as a non-starter, while most routes for a new highway, including a $1.5-billion route west of the watershed, were dismissed.
Remember, those costs were all in 2007 dollars.
In other words: Have patience.