Barriers coming to deadly section of Highway 97 north of Vernon

A section of Highway 97A north of Vernon which was the scene of a fatal accident this week will have concrete median barriers installed in the middle of the four-lane road.

The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure confirmed the median, which will also include Highway 97 before it turns into Highway 97A at the at the turnoff to Kamloops, will likely be completed in the spring of 2023.

On July 12, a 69-year-old Enderby man was killed when the truck he was driving crossed the centre line and hit a dump truck.

The dump truck driver has very shaken and sore, but largely unhurt. He questioned why there were no barriers on that stretch of highway.

READ MORE: Driver in fatal Vernon crash calls for median on Highway 97A

Calls for a concrete barrier to divide the 100 km/h four-lane highway came after a fatality on the stretch of road between Vernon and Armstrong in 2019.

The family of popular Vernon dance teacher, Ruth Blencoe, campaigned for a median to be built after the 44-year-old was killed in a fatal collision in February 2019.

Less than a year later, a Calgary woman was killed in a head-on collision after a vehicle crossed the centre line. Blencoe's granddaughter then launched an online petition asking the provincial to build a barrier.

"If there was a median there, people's lives would have been saved… if it can be prevented it just doesn't make sense to keep having people go through (the grief)," Blencoe's granddaughter said at the time.

In the spring of 2021, the Ministry did act and build a median barrier that stretched six kilometres south from Armstrong on the highway but stopped eight kilometres before Vernon.

The Ministry has now said the remaining stretch from the Swan Lake overpass in Vernon to Pleasant Valley Road in Armstrong will be completed.

The project is anticipated to go to tender this summer and be completed in spring 2023, the Ministry said.

If all goes to plan and the barrier is built next spring, it will happen four years after it was first publicly asked for.

The Ministry of Transportation didn't answer when asked why it didn't build the entire barrier from Armstrong to Vernon all at the same time in 2021.

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