Starting next week, the trip between the BC Interior and Alberta will get a little bit longer.
Major construction on Phase 4 of the Kicking Horse Canyon Project will get underway on Monday.
That means the Trans-Canada Highway (Hwy 1) will be closed between Golden and Castle Junction, right around the BC-Alberta border, will be closed for over a month.
Once the scheduled closure wraps up on May 14, there will still be 24-hour closures on weekdays for the remainder of the month, with the exception of the Victoria Day long weekend.
While the highway is closed, traffic will be rerouted via Hwy 93S and Hwy 95, adding up to 90 minutes of travel time, but taking motorists through the beautiful village of Radium.
A commuter pass system will allow local and essential traffic to be escorted through the construction zone during two brief peak-period windows each day.
"We're excited to be moving forward with major improvements on Hwy 1 to the Alberta border to make travel better and safer for people who live and work in the region," said Rob Fleming, BC’s minister of transportation and infrastructure.
"This is the fourth and final phase of the Kicking Horse Canyon, and we know this work will significantly upgrade this challenging section of Hwy 1, especially for all of the commercial truck drivers who travel this corridor regularly.”
As part of this project, crews will realign and widen the final 4.8-kilometres of Hwy 1 through the canyon.
It’s a necessary move to accommodate the more-than-12,000 vehicles that travel the route daily in the summer, with up to 30% of that traffic consisting of commercial vehicles.
The first three phases of the project have already transformed 21 km of narrow, winding two-lane highway into a modern, four-lane 100 km/h standard route.
Crews will also be mitigating rockfall and avalanche hazards with bridges, rock catchment ditches and other measures to improve safety and reliability along the corridor.
Wildlife exclusion fencing and wildlife passage opportunities will also be added to prevent collisions between vehicles and animals.
For more information on this project, click this link.
