46 - Sunduy, September 13, 1987 - North Shore News

Travel

Coquithalia: highway of the future

UNTIL PHASE Two of the Coquihalla Highway opened
there wasn’t much point in driving Phase One, except to
earn a bumiper sticker and see a part of the province

formerly inaccessible.

Until Phase Two linked Merritt
with Kamloops any time saved by
driving the first part of the high-
way was lost on the bottleneck
created by dumping four lanes of
traffic on to a two-lane country
road,

Over the Labor Day weekend,
with all sorts of fanfare, the gov-
ernment proudly opened Phase
Two. We just happened to be
parked in Lumby (just outside of
Vernon to anyone unfamiliar with
this metropolis) and decided to
take the new route home.

So, for anyone heading to the
interior in the near future, here is a
first-hand overview of Bennett's
legacy.

Driving up, we used the Hope-
Princeton Highway and | must say
it’s a whole lot better than it used
to be. For a white-knuckle passen-
ger the inclusion of regular passing
lanes more or less kept me off the
floor of the car.

Vancouver to Lumby took us
approximately 6% hours. Lumby
to Vancouver, using the Co-
quihalla, took five hours and fif-
teen minutes. Score the first point

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for the new road.

Next, I'd heard complaints hat
“there's nothing to see’? on the
Coquihalla. Well, if your idea of
scenery includes ratty-looking fll-
ing stations and hamburger joints

travel
wise

by Barbara McCreadie
RR

you'll be disappointed.

However, if a poll were taken
for the most beautiful highway in
the world — and I've seen one hell
of a lot of them — this would get
my vote for first place. Brian
remarked, *‘It's like driving on top
of the world.””

Back for a minute to those fill-
ing stations and hamburger joints.
If either your tank or your stom-
ach needs filling, do it in
Kamloops, Merritt or Hope
because there is nothing in be-

tween. The ABC Family Restau-
rant in Merritt is where we stop-
ped.and although T wouldn't pester
the chef for recipes it was perfectly
adequate.

Ud like to meet the engineers
that designed the Coquihalla. And,
I'd like to suggest that they give
classes to the guys that designed
highways like our #1 or the USA I-

Driving on to either of those
highways, incoming traffic has
split seconds to merge with the on-
coming flow. The bottlenecks and
pileups during peak hours make
you wish you'd stayed at home.

Granted, not too many roads
feed into the Coquihalla, but when
they do, the road widens for miles
to six lanes. This is the highway of
the future and I'll bet it will be still
outstanding in the year 2000.

Now, for some of the com-
plaints. Truckers have a fet of
them. A six per cent grade isn’t
uncommon, but the Coquihalls
has more than its share. Also, the
climbs are long ones, giving the
trucker no time to level out and
take a break. I'm told that it's
brutal on fuel for large vehicles.

The toll booth, located about
halfway between Hope and Mer-
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