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A different article[1] I read with a similar headline has this claim: > To leave the Lower Mainland of BC, you would have to use Highway 99, Highway 1, or the

A different article[1] I read with a similar headline has this claim: > To leave the Lower Mainland of BC, you would have to use Highway 99, Highway 1, or the Coquihalla. I'm not at all familiar with the area. Are there really only 3 roads between Vancouver and the rest of Canada without going through Washington? That seems like such a low number. [1] https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/highway-closures-flooding-mudslides-bc https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/highway-closures-flooding-mu...

deanCommie 5y ago
It's actually worse than that - it's only Highway 1 and Highway 99 Highway 1 splits into the #1, the #5 (The Coquihalla), and the #3 after Hope, which is after Abbostsford. https://www.google.com/maps/@49.4275117,-121.4567432,10.54z https://www.google.com/maps/@49.4275117,-121.4567432,10.54z
ghaff 5y ago
Vancouver is essentially surrounded by a combination of water, mountains, and the United States (with more mountains). In general, there aren't a lot of routes through mountain ranges.
foofoo55 5y ago
Yes. Vancouver sits in a little triangle of land in the south-west (bottom-left?) corner of Canada, completely surrounded by mountains to the north and east. We heavily rely on the highway south through the state of Washington.
- dn3500 5y ago
  Could you take the ferry to Prince Rupert and get out that way?
  - cf100clunk 5y ago
    BC Ferries has umpteen travel advisories due to high seas during this weather event, so don't count on their schedule: https://www.bcferries.com/ https://www.bcferries.com/
  - elihu 5y ago
    That's a really long route and the ferries don't carry that many people compared to a road. (I once took a ferry from Prince Rupert to Skidegate on the Queen Charlotte islands and back. It was an 800 passenger ferry, temporarily replacing a 300 passenger ferry I think on the same route which was taken out of service for maintenance. The ferry in question was the ill-fated Queen of the North, which ran aground on a different route a few years later and sank.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Queen_of_the_North https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Queen_of_the_North
    - Maursault 5y ago
      Re: MV Queen of the North, a 20 minute ferry ride is thrilling. A couple of hours is too long. The QotN route was 14 hours?! Terrifying ordinarily, then exponentially so on its last voyage.
      - elihu 5y ago
        Prince Rupert to Skidegate (the route we took) is 7 hours, and the reverse trip would have been about the same. I thought it was rather a pleasant ride. Wikipedia says the QotN's regular route from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert was 18 hours. I'd probably get a little bored, though I'm sure the scenery is amazing. I think most passengers don't expect the ship to scrape it's bottom on a rock at full speed. It sunk in the middle of the night, so probably a lot of the passengers were asleep before they had to scramble to the lifeboats. All but two people got off. Rupert to Skidegate is mostly open sea, but I could imagine navigating some of those narrow fjords could be a little nerve-wracking. I think they have to time their routes to account for the huge tidal changes they get there, which cause some pretty strong currents. Incidently, the QotN was the only ship in the Canadian ferry fleet that didn't have a double hull. Not sure it would have made a difference in this case.
Tiktaalik 5y ago
Open up the google maps of BC and turn on satellite view and you'll see why. The whole province is all mountain with the only roads snaking through the few river valleys and mountain passes. Big province, but remarkably little actual habitable land.
- int_19h 5y ago
  Better yet, switch to the "Terrain" layer, which specifically shows elevation: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.9495363,-122.5413925,8.33z/data=!5m1!1e4 https://www.google.com/maps/@48.9495363,-122.5413925,8.33z/d...
- elihu 5y ago
  The vicinity of Prince George looks like it has enough habitable land to fit the whole population of California into a small corner, but I agree that most of the province is very hostile to human life and transportation networks. I'm from Oregon. We have Mount Hood. It's weird to see a mountain that looks like Mount Hood next to another mountain that looks like Mount Hood, in front of a dozen more mountains that look like Mount Hood, in front of hundreds or thousands more, and so on. It's intimidating even just to look at.
mikestew 5y ago
I mean this with no snark at all: go look at a map of BC. For a lot of that province, three roads going in and out is luxury, must be a big city or something. Go not terribly far north of Vancouver, and for a lot of populated areas there is the road.
jcranmer 5y ago
Depends on how you count. Vancouver is on the mouth of Fraser River on basically a combination of glacial scouring and sandy infill. The coast immediately adjacent to Vancouver (and indeed, even somewhat inland) is basically your typical fjord system. Thus, Vancouver is surrounded by the west by the Salish Sea, and mountains on all other sides, asides from the sandy coast that stretches south towards Seattle. Crossing from Vancouver to the Canadian plains requires crossing two main mountain ranges--the Pacific range and the Rocky Mountains. The main river systems here are oriented primarily in a north-south direction, which means they aren't a great help in finding water gaps in the mountains. However, the next major cities to the east in Canada are Edmonton and Calgary, which means any natural highway route is going to want to generally veer north out of Vancouver anyways. There are basically three crossings of the Continental Divide worth mentioning in lower British Columbia: Highway 16 (the road to Edmonton), Highway 1 (the road to Calgary), and Highway 3 (which hugs the border). In the Pacific Range, these dwindle down to three highways leaving Vancouver itself, Highway 7 and Highway 1 that leave on the north and south banks of the Fraser respectively, and Highway 99 that jumps over to the next fjord north before making its way inland. Somewhat upstream of Vancouver, at Hope, Highway 1 crosses the river and meets up with Highway 7 to continue following the Fraser River due north, while Highway 5 heads vaguely northeast along the Coquihalla, and Highway 3 splits off from Highway 5 shortly thereafter to continue primarily east near the border. Between the two mountain ranges, the connections of roads is rather more complicated, but either way, you're going to filter down to the same bottlenecks when crossing one of the mountains. And all of those roads I described crossing the Pacific Range? Every single one of them spend substantial portions of its time in a narrow river valley and is currently severed in several places because of washouts. However many roads you want to count it--they are all cut right now.

deanCommie 5y ago

It's actually worse than that - it's only Highway 1 and Highway 99 Highway 1 splits into the #1, the #5 (The Coquihalla), and the #3 after Hope, which is after Abbostsford. https://www.google.com/maps/@49.4275117,-121.4567432,10.54z https://www.google.com/maps/@49.4275117,-121.4567432,10.54z

ghaff 5y ago

Vancouver is essentially surrounded by a combination of water, mountains, and the United States (with more mountains). In general, there aren't a lot of routes through mountain ranges.

foofoo55 5y ago

Yes. Vancouver sits in a little triangle of land in the south-west (bottom-left?) corner of Canada, completely surrounded by mountains to the north and east. We heavily rely on the highway south through the state of Washington.

dn3500 5y ago
Could you take the ferry to Prince Rupert and get out that way?
- cf100clunk 5y ago
  BC Ferries has umpteen travel advisories due to high seas during this weather event, so don't count on their schedule: https://www.bcferries.com/ https://www.bcferries.com/
- elihu 5y ago
  That's a really long route and the ferries don't carry that many people compared to a road. (I once took a ferry from Prince Rupert to Skidegate on the Queen Charlotte islands and back. It was an 800 passenger ferry, temporarily replacing a 300 passenger ferry I think on the same route which was taken out of service for maintenance. The ferry in question was the ill-fated Queen of the North, which ran aground on a different route a few years later and sank.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Queen_of_the_North https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Queen_of_the_North
  - Maursault 5y ago
    Re: MV Queen of the North, a 20 minute ferry ride is thrilling. A couple of hours is too long. The QotN route was 14 hours?! Terrifying ordinarily, then exponentially so on its last voyage.
    - elihu 5y ago
      Prince Rupert to Skidegate (the route we took) is 7 hours, and the reverse trip would have been about the same. I thought it was rather a pleasant ride. Wikipedia says the QotN's regular route from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert was 18 hours. I'd probably get a little bored, though I'm sure the scenery is amazing. I think most passengers don't expect the ship to scrape it's bottom on a rock at full speed. It sunk in the middle of the night, so probably a lot of the passengers were asleep before they had to scramble to the lifeboats. All but two people got off. Rupert to Skidegate is mostly open sea, but I could imagine navigating some of those narrow fjords could be a little nerve-wracking. I think they have to time their routes to account for the huge tidal changes they get there, which cause some pretty strong currents. Incidently, the QotN was the only ship in the Canadian ferry fleet that didn't have a double hull. Not sure it would have made a difference in this case.

Tiktaalik 5y ago

Open up the google maps of BC and turn on satellite view and you'll see why. The whole province is all mountain with the only roads snaking through the few river valleys and mountain passes. Big province, but remarkably little actual habitable land.

int_19h 5y ago
Better yet, switch to the "Terrain" layer, which specifically shows elevation: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.9495363,-122.5413925,8.33z/data=!5m1!1e4 https://www.google.com/maps/@48.9495363,-122.5413925,8.33z/d...
elihu 5y ago
The vicinity of Prince George looks like it has enough habitable land to fit the whole population of California into a small corner, but I agree that most of the province is very hostile to human life and transportation networks. I'm from Oregon. We have Mount Hood. It's weird to see a mountain that looks like Mount Hood next to another mountain that looks like Mount Hood, in front of a dozen more mountains that look like Mount Hood, in front of hundreds or thousands more, and so on. It's intimidating even just to look at.

mikestew 5y ago

I mean this with no snark at all: go look at a map of BC. For a lot of that province, three roads going in and out is luxury, must be a big city or something. Go not terribly far north of Vancouver, and for a lot of populated areas there is the road.

jcranmer 5y ago

Depends on how you count. Vancouver is on the mouth of Fraser River on basically a combination of glacial scouring and sandy infill. The coast immediately adjacent to Vancouver (and indeed, even somewhat inland) is basically your typical fjord system. Thus, Vancouver is surrounded by the west by the Salish Sea, and mountains on all other sides, asides from the sandy coast that stretches south towards Seattle. Crossing from Vancouver to the Canadian plains requires crossing two main mountain ranges--the Pacific range and the Rocky Mountains. The main river systems here are oriented primarily in a north-south direction, which means they aren't a great help in finding water gaps in the mountains. However, the next major cities to the east in Canada are Edmonton and Calgary, which means any natural highway route is going to want to generally veer north out of Vancouver anyways. There are basically three crossings of the Continental Divide worth mentioning in lower British Columbia: Highway 16 (the road to Edmonton), Highway 1 (the road to Calgary), and Highway 3 (which hugs the border). In the Pacific Range, these dwindle down to three highways leaving Vancouver itself, Highway 7 and Highway 1 that leave on the north and south banks of the Fraser respectively, and Highway 99 that jumps over to the next fjord north before making its way inland. Somewhat upstream of Vancouver, at Hope, Highway 1 crosses the river and meets up with Highway 7 to continue following the Fraser River due north, while Highway 5 heads vaguely northeast along the Coquihalla, and Highway 3 splits off from Highway 5 shortly thereafter to continue primarily east near the border. Between the two mountain ranges, the connections of roads is rather more complicated, but either way, you're going to filter down to the same bottlenecks when crossing one of the mountains. And all of those roads I described crossing the Pacific Range? Every single one of them spend substantial portions of its time in a narrow river valley and is currently severed in several places because of washouts. However many roads you want to count it--they are all cut right now.