A North Cariboo woman has started a petition on Facebook to prevent the closure of a 400-metre section of Quesnel-Hixon Road.
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure announced last week (August 14th) that the road, damaged by a landslide back in 2021, will not be fixed and that the Cottonwood River Canyon Bridge will be taken out of service.
The reasons given were ensuring public safety and managing taxpayer money wisely as the repairs would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Tamara Goyer, who lives on Tertiary Road, says a lot of people use this road and she says it not only adds 15 minutes for a trip to town but it is also a very important alternate route in the event of a wildfire.
“A lot of people are just really worried about the safety of this area because if Highway 97 is closed there is no other way around, and before that it was the alternate route and people would just take that way and you could get around the closure, and it’s also double the response time for emergency services.”
Goyer says they are using Olson Road right now and she says it is not safe.
“Olson Road is the alternate route right now and it’s really skinny, it’s heavily trafficked by logging trucks, and a lot of people have been forced off the road. It’s supposed to be a bus route but the pavement is all broken up, it’s really bumpy and it’s really bad.”
Goyer says a lot of people are also upset that the bridge is being taken out of service.
“It’s an historical bridge for a lot of people, and there are a lot of people signing this because they like to come out here and spend the summers too.”
Goyer says 1,050 people have already signed the petition after just a few days, and she is working to get more.
“I am just working right now to get a paper copy out and I am going to be getting that put all over Quesnel and Hixon to get people to sign it. We want to get some help with this because I found out from Facebook that they were going to close our route. They didn’t talk to us, they didn’t ask us about anything. We were hopeful that it was going to get fixed because they had alternate routes on the website, and then all of a sudden that was taken down and they are saying that they are closing it.”
She says they are also going to hold a community meeting in Quesnel in September.
“I am hoping to have most of the signatures by then and I just want to be able to show all the government officials how much this road means to everybody, the safety risks and what we are all worried about.”
Goyer says the 10 project manager Greg Bruce will be there and they are also inviting MLA Coralee Oakes and MP Todd Doherty.
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