No time for a road trip this summer? Jump in the B.C. Road Trip Time Machine

Summer is here and many people think about taking a road trip, cruising scenic B.C. highways on a hot summer day.

If travel plans aren’t immediately on the agenda, a trip down memory lane with a B.C. Road Trip Time Machine video might be just what you’re looking for.

The Ministry of Transportation’s social media team has created 23 videos of “road trips” by digitizing 16 mm photo log footage taken in 1966.

The original idea behind the photo logs was to save provincial highway engineers the cost and time of having to travel the various highways to monitor road conditions, the ministry says. By viewing the photo logs, highway personnel could check out road conditions and plan safety improvement projects on 9,000 kilometres of highways — from Fort St. John to the tip of Vancouver Island — without ever leaving their desks in Victoria.

Photo logs were created by rigging a camera to the dashboard of a vehicle that took still images of the highway every 26 metres. The still frames were spliced together into a single film clip.

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The ministry runs the film through a vintage projector and records the projection, which is then slowed to 27 per cent of its original speed for viewing.

Videos have been created highlighting several B.C. Interior highways including Highway 3 from Hope to Princeton, Highway 97 from the U.S. border to Penticton, Penticton to Kelowna, Kelowna to Vernon, the U.S. border to Vernon, and one of the newest Road Trip Time Machine videos, Highway 8 from Merritt to Spences Bridge.

The videos capture a less sophisticated time in B.C. highway history when major highways were paved, but still full of curves, with narrow gravel shoulders, minimal safety features, and for the most part, light rural traffic. Even then, more than 50 years ago, it’s astonishing to see how many recreational vehicles there were on B.C. roads.

The first Road Trip Time Machine was released in January 2016 and the ministry invites viewers to share suggestions for future videos by visiting its website here.

Some of the more exceptional still frames in the films have also been shared on the ministry's Flickr page here.

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