Daily highway closures near Tofino to continue into spring 2022

Victoria -

The only highway connecting Tofino and Ucluelet, B.C. with the rest of Vancouver Island will remain closed for six hours every weekday into next spring, the province has announced.

The daily closures have been in place since 2020 when the road construction near Kennedy Lake was supposed to have been completed.

Currently, the highway is closed between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. and again between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday to Friday.

Outside of those times, including all day on weekends, traffic is stopped at the site until the top of each hour when single-lane alternating traffic is allowed to clear the work zone before closures resume for 30 to 45 minutes.

That schedule will remain in place through the winter and into next spring, the B.C. Transportation Ministry announced Thursday.

The closures are to allow for rock blasting as the highway is widened and straightened through the area.

"Blasting is limited to daylight hours due to continuing safety and predictability issues with the outer face of the bluffs," the province said in a statement. "Local residents have confirmed that maintaining the current daytime closure schedule impacts daily routines, businesses and tourism operations the least."

HOLIDAY SCHEDULE

The province says the daily closures will be temporarily suspended during the holidays.

There will be no prolonged closures between Dec. 18 and Jan. 3, 2022, but the single-lane alternating traffic clearances will continue.

The daytime closure schedule will resume on Jan. 4.

The Kennedy Lake construction project was originally scheduled for completion in summer 2020 at a cost of $38.1 million. The cost has since grown to $53.9 million, with an estimated completion date of summer 2022.

Early last year, blasting at the site triggered a rockslide that cut off access to Tofino and Ucluelet for a weekend.

"A variety of factors, including the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for smaller blasts due to the nature of the fractured bedrock, increased environmental protections, and the repairs to Highway 4 resulting from blasting damage at the project site in January 2020 have contributed to a new projected project completion date and increase in budget," the province says.

The ministry estimates the construction is now 75 per cent complete.