B.C. government urged to make Sea to Sky Highway safer as crashes increase

There are growing calls for the B.C. government to take action to make the busy Sea to Sky Highway safer.

Numbers from ICBC show there were 167 crashes on the road between Vancouver and Whistler in 2024, which is an average of one every two days.

About half of those crashes resulted in injuries or death, ICBC found.

Local road safety advocates say those crashes often happen on stretches of the highway that do not have dividers between opposing lanes and they are calling for the road to be modernized.

“Perhaps some increased centre medians would be good,” Squamish Mayor Armand Hurford said.

“I think there’ve been some crashes where some additional concrete barricades on the side would have been good. There’s different ways to manage the traffic. If there is a closure, you know, of course, we’re looking for alternate ways to get folks off the highway.”

The Sea to Sky Highway was first paved in 1966, but underwent a $775-million renovation before the 2010 Winter Olympics, according to TransCanadaHighway.com.

Safety advocates say it’s time to perform some upgrades.

“This design is 25 or 30 years old now,” Matthew Paugh, who is the administrator of the Sea to Sky Road Conditions group, said.

“It’s been 16 years since the Olympics. Seven years before that was when we were awarded it, which means the engineering plans had to be minimum three or four years in place before that. It’s just not the same. So the infrastructure needs and the population demands are very different.”

Paugh also says the Ministry of Transportation needs to do a better job of communicating with drivers when an incident causes the highway to close.

“We’re always looking at ways that we can improve and obviously, if the issue of medians is a way we can improve, we will most certainly take a look at that, but one of the most important things is for people to drive the speed limit,” B.C. Transportation Minister Mike Farnworth said.

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