[Sylvanfan]

Well it's summer, and I had to drive the Trans Canada to Kamloops to visit my folks and than on to the lower Mainland to see the wife's grandma. Every time I hit that patch where the 4 lane ends in the park to outside of Kamloops where the freeway starts up again, I become the most miserable tourettes case you ever heard. It is the one thing guaranteed to rile me up and make me miserable. Probably more so than a game 7 SCF loss to Tampa Bay.

Now I always thought Canada a G8 country was pretty wealthy, and had a nice educated work force. Yet we have a third world hi-way connecting our nations largest port city, and as the only hi-way linking the countries number 3 and 5 cities. That stretch around Golden is an absolute disaster as any day of the week you're going to drive 40 going in and out of Golden for at least 20 km. It is the worst stretch of hi-way in the civilized world if you ask me. Hell Brazil has better hi-ways for crying out loud.

I heard that it was costing approximately 1 million dollars per kilometer of road to twin hi-way 11 from Red Deer to Sylvan Lake. Now that’s an easy job that can be done on the surface even though a fair bit of cut and fill was required for some portions. The Liberal government basically p*ssed away 2 billion dollars on a gun registry that has accomplished nothing to this day. There is 400km of road that MUST BE IMPROVED between Banff and Kamloops. That allows 5 million per kilometer for improvements. Now I'll admit that it's going to be a challenge in some of those mountains. There is also the whole national park issue, but really building a better hi-way through the parks or even around the parks would have a positive long term effect I think. I was on a stretch of hi-way in Europe running through the Dolomites in Austria into Northern Italy that was basically an entire stretch of Bridges and Tunnels. If you've ever been to the Island of Oahu in Hawaii the H3 is the same thing allowing people to get to the North side of the Island in 20 minutes from Honolulu.

It's time to fess up and realize the traffic demands on that hi-way demand 4 lanes, and that the way to accomplish it is to look at elevating a good portion of the hi-way, and tunneling long stretches in places. It's even worth visiting the idea of alternate routes around some of those stretches. I imagine it was purposefully built to follow along the path of the CPR, which was based on an 1800’s trail. Since than we have developed something I think you’ve all heard of called an aircraft which allows us to pick out and survey an easier path to build a major road way. But on the flip side there are other stretches where a lot less work would be required and 1.5 per kilometer should be more than adequate to improve the road. The need is there now, and it's only going to grow in the future. The cost of building the hi-way now will pale to what it will cost to do it 20 years from now. If they can build a bride to connect PEI and it's 25000 people to the mainland, why the hell can't they build a hi-way intended to serve as the major route connecting the entire country to the West coast?

Anyways that concludes this years version of my why does the Trans Canada still suck rant. I'm ashamed as a Canadian tax payer at how much of my money is wasted on ad scam, or the Gun Registry, or Ralph Klein jetting around when he should drive, and countless other crap by both Federal and Provincial Governments in every region of our country when it seems pretty obvious to me that our one major national hi-way is in complete shambles. I apologize for the length of the post, but it doesn't even begin to descrive how enraged I get every time I'm on that stretch of disgracefull road.