The Dicken Road Detour remains the Ministry of Transportation’s preferred option for managing Highway 3 traffic during the Hartley Creek Bridge replacement, despite months of opposition from residents, local advocacy efforts, and ongoing safety concerns.
For months, residents have raised serious concerns about the plan to divert Highway 3 traffic through Dicken Road. They have written letters, organized opposition, launched a petition, raised safety concerns, and made it clear that this is not simply a matter of inconvenience.
The issue is safety.
Dicken Road is a residential road. It was not designed to function as Highway 3, even temporarily. It has homes, businesses, farms, driveways, intersections, school bus stops, cyclists, pedestrians, and local traffic that already uses the road daily.
The Ministry acknowledges that Dicken Road is a residential road and is not intended to function as a permanent highway route. Yet it is still proceeding with a plan that would use it as a temporary highway route during bridge construction.
The Ministry says its traffic analysis confirms Dicken Road can accommodate Highway 3 detour traffic during peak summer conditions with acceptable operations when traffic control measures are in place. It also states that expected delays would be approximately 25 to 35 seconds per vehicle. The Ministry’s full May 25 project update can be viewed here.
Many residents who live along Dicken Road will find that conclusion difficult to accept.
Anyone familiar with Highway 3 traffic near Fernie knows how quickly traffic can back up during summer weekends, construction delays, crashes, long weekends, commercial traffic surges, and peak visitor periods. The idea that a residential road with reduced speeds, multiple access points, turning vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, school bus activity, and local traffic will experience delays measured in seconds rather than minutes deserves far more public scrutiny.
If the traffic study is being used as the foundation for this decision, the public should be allowed to see it.
The Ministry should release the full traffic analysis, including the assumptions, traffic counts, peak-hour modelling, seasonal forecasts, intersection analysis, and sensitivity testing used to justify this plan. Residents should not be expected to simply accept a summary conclusion when their safety and daily lives are directly affected.
The Ministry also states that a temporary bypass on Highway 3 was assessed but not recommended due to environmental considerations, impacts to adjacent private properties, and other project-related concerns.
Those concerns may be real. But they do not automatically outweigh the concerns associated with putting Highway 3 traffic through Dicken Road.
Every construction option has impacts. A temporary bypass would have impacts. Using Dicken Road has impacts. The question is why the impacts of a temporary bypass were considered unacceptable while the impacts on the residents of Dicken Road were considered acceptable.
The Ministry also argues that money spent improving Dicken Road will provide long-term community benefits, including shoulder widening, brushing, repaving, line painting, signage, and traffic control measures. But road improvements do not erase the core problem.
Fresh pavement is not compensation for months of highway traffic through a residential corridor. Wider shoulders do not change the fact that this is a local road being asked to carry provincial highway traffic. Signage and speed limits do not eliminate the risks created when through-traffic, local traffic, school buses, pedestrians, cyclists, and residential access are forced into the same narrow corridor.
The Hartley Creek Bridge replacement may be necessary. Improving Highway 3 infrastructure is important. But necessary infrastructure work does not justify accepting the easiest available detour without fully addressing the concerns of the people most affected.
Residents are not asking whether traffic can physically fit on Dicken Road. They are asking whether it should be there at all.
After months of opposition, the Ministry’s update does not answer that question convincingly. It explains why the Ministry believes the plan can work. It does not adequately explain why the concerns of residents were not enough to change the plan.
There is still time. The Ministry’s revised schedule now anticipates tendering in summer 2026, detour preparation in fall 2026, and main bridge construction beginning in spring 2027. That timeline creates an opportunity for a more transparent review, release of the full traffic study, and serious reconsideration of a temporary Highway 3 bypass.
The residents of Dicken Road have been clear. The question now is not whether the province is still listening. The question is why, after months of clear opposition and valid safety concerns, the province is not listening.
If you have questions, comments or concerns, please direct them to: H3.Hartley@gov.bc.ca
