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Supercharger - Golden, BC - Trans-Canada Highway
- Thread starter CanadaGoose
- Start date
Third Tesla Supercharger coming to Golden [British Columbia]
Golden is a small town in the interior of British Columbia with a population of just over 4,000 people. Despite this, and thanks to its location along a key travelling route through the province, the [...]
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The extra capacity in Golden might be welcome with the periodic closures on Hwy 1 east of Golden (with the resulting detours down through Radium).
Building anything in BC is always slow for a variety of reasons:
1) Building in the mountains sucks
2) The environmentalist groups would knee-jerk file an opposition to someone jokingly filing an environmental permit for a bear to sh|t in the woods.
3) BC is a 'have' province, so all the money that most of Western Canada would love to see spent on BC infrastructure, ends up in Quebec for.... reasons...?
The only real factor here is the cost of a project that is essentially one of North America's most challenging highway construction projects to date.
It's a 4 lane divided highway being carved into and hung from the side of a cliff consisting of weak rock above a river and rail line.
I've been on far too many American interstates to believe that any road project is too difficult. It also doesn't explain the hundreds of km's on flat-ish ground that is still two lane. For the longest time, the 'Welcome to BC' sign was completely redundant, as the four lane divided abruptly ending loudly announced what jurisdiction you had just crossed into.
On that note, I'll also add a fourth problem (can't miss the worn out joke opportunity):
4) BC provincial politics suck, as the vast majority of the population is beyond Hope, and they've deluded themselves into thinking it's the other way around - that the rest of Canada is beyond Hope. Why bother with infrastructure when it's beyond Hope?
America has lots of freeway but their issue is handling lots of traffic, not generally tough construction conditions. And where they do have tough construction like in the US Rockies they have a much larger population to help justify it. Building outside the mountains is just so much easier.
The rest just comes down to prioritizing resources. It's hard to blame them for not prioritizing nice-to-have rural 4-laning over handling the sections of other highways where there is major congestion. That's mainly the lower mainland as you point out, but there's been lots of highway work over time in the Central Okanagan, around Kamloops, and on Vancouver Island.
Fortunately for everyone, they do seem to have a plan to actually finish the job between Kamloops and Alberta. It will just take time I guess.
It kinda ruins the joke when you start bringing in cardinal directions.From my perspective here in Seattle, the vast majority of BC's land is beyond Hope, but the vast majority of the province's population is southwest of Hope
Both parts of BC make the joke that the other part is "beyond Hope" but neither realizes it (I've lived in both). Oh well, it's the best place on earth and I wish the province would realize the strength as a whole.From my perspective here in Seattle, the vast majority of BC's land is beyond Hope, but the vast majority of the province's population is southwest of Hope
My view as someone who has paid taxes in BC my whole life is that I have no issue ensuring the strength of the whole nation through sharing our resources. BC won the jackpot with our resources. We can and must ensure the nation benefits from that in some small way. The provinces without the same bounty deserve the same basic services we expect here at home.
I have a similar sentiment, but grow weary when the rest of the country sh|ts on Alberta, forgetting that per capita, we contribute ~5x more to the federal coffers than the next runner up (Ontraio). Oil is eventually going to die, and I look forward to the rest of Canada figuring out who was paying the bills.
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