At one point during the Second World War, the military posted sentries on Parson’s Bridge, which spans the mouth of Millstream Creek by the Six Mile Pub.
Apparently they were worried about saboteurs, or perhaps a Japanese submarine somehow sneaking up Esquimalt Harbour and taking out the bridge, severing the Island Highway and cutting off Victoria from the rest of Vancouver Island. Couldn’t have that, could we?
Which brings us to today and Why We Must Fix the Malahat Right Now, chapter XXVII.
Excuse me if you have heard this before — and you have, every time the highway has found itself in need of the Heimlich manoeuvre — but it’s frustrating that half a million people have no alternative to that one ribbon of pavement snaking between Victoria and the rest of the south Island. What’s worse, there’s no end in sight.
The authorities can wave statistics showing the Malahat isn’t particularly dangerous when compared with similar stretches of highway, but that’s not the point. The problem is that when it does get shut down by a crash, there’s no easy detour. When the Pat Bay Highway gets blocked, traffic is diverted to an adjacent road. When the Malahat is severed, you get to discover Port Renfrew.
As Thursday’s crash proved, the existing options are, well, not really options. That twisting, turning Victoria-Sooke-Port Renfrew-Lake Cowichan-Duncan route is more than 200 kilometres long. It doesn’t take much for twisting, turning Finlayson Arm Road to get choked like Rachel Notley at a Greenpeace barbecue.
The Mill Bay ferry carries just 19 or so cars and takes an hour and 10 minutes to shuttle to Brentwood Bay and back. (Do the math: it would take a month of round-the-clock, non-stop, full-capacity sailings to transport the 25,000 vehicles that drive the Malahat each day.)
Every time there’s a lengthy shutdown, two things happen. First, there’s a spate of comments from people saying the Malahat wouldn’t be a problem if people didn’t drive too fast/too drunk/too distracted, which is true, but that’s like saying you wouldn’t have to lock your house if burglars would stop stealing stuff.
Second, there’s a demand that the government Do Something Right Now, to which the government replies that if it were that easy, the Malahat would have been fixed already.
A 2007 engineering study commissioned for the Transportation Ministry shot down 19 alternatives to the status quo, with every idea deemed either too wacky, too expensive, or too hard on the environment.
Double-decking the highway through Goldstream Provincial Park was dismissed out of hand. Blowing a bigger hole through the park and expanding the existing route would not only cost hundreds of millions of dollars but leave nature-lovers aghast — and would still leave drivers with no second route.
Commuter rail? Not enough capacity to make a difference, wildly expensive at an estimated $140 per passenger per trip, and of little use to those whose destination is any distance from the tracks, which now end in Vic West. Also, a passenger train would be no help in carrying goods should the highway be closed.
A bridge — either a four-kilometre, multi-span link between Mill Bay and the northern Saanich Peninsula or a 1.4-kilometre crossing between Bamberton and Highlands — would cost between $700 million and $1.2 billion, and would invite blowback from those worried about the impact on the Pat Bay and the Peninsula. A new highway through the Sooke Hills Wilderness Preserve could cost $400 million. Building one west of Victoria’s watershed would be more environmentally palatable but would cost up to $1.5 billion. Remember, these are all 2007 figures.
While Premier John Horgan told Vancouver media Friday he would like to “dust off” the bridge idea for another look, the Transportation Ministry wasn’t exactly encouraging as it presented new cost estimates and outlined challenges. The logistical problems of a bridge (the span alone would cost $1 billion) would include seismic considerations, shipping-related approvals and all the connecting roadwork on the Peninsula. Bypassing the Goldstream section of the highway, which would mean going into the watershed, would cost upward of $600 million.
“There are significant costs and engineering challenges associated with alternate routes that have been considered to this point,” a statement from the ministry said. “If there are reasonable ideas for options that are brought forward, we would take a look at those ideas.”
It went on to talk about in-progress and planned upgrades on the existing route, which is fine, but is also a way of indicating the government has no intention of coming up with an alternative to the Malahat any time soon.
Which means you can expect to read Why We Must Fix the Malahat Right Now, chapter XXVIII sometime down the (closed) road.
