By Doug Collins

Merritt Mayor keeping fingers crossed on Coquihalla maintenance this winter

Oct 13, 2016 | 7:54 AM

MERRITT  —  There’s already been one travel advisory this fall for the Coquihalla highway. Snowfall Saturday resulted in a number of accidents for police. That’s raised some concerns about whether or not maintenance of the highway will be better this year than it was last.

The City of Merritt, in particular Mayor Neil Menard, raised concerns over the amount of maintenance being done on the highway. He says it was better after a mid-winter meeting with the Minister of Transportation Todd Stone. Menard says they’ve already pressed the issue this year, including bending the ear of Premier Christy Clark.

“And that topic did come up, and we basically said the same thing to her. That yes, we did have a go around last year and we’re hoping  that because of that, that the maintenance on the highway will be as good or better than it was at the latter part of the year last year.” said the Mayor.

Menard says “we haven’t forgotten about it, and we hope that because of what happened last year, that the group here, VSA, will do an outstanding job this winter. “

The biggest thing, says Menard, is that everyone in his community uses the highway for just about everything. “We use both the Connector and the Coquihalla,” Menard says. “Our concern is for our citizens-hospital stuff, medical stuff, going in just to go to one of the larger places for the day, getting to appointments and that sort of thing. And we even have some people that work here that need to get back and forth. “

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Menard says “we’re concerned and we’re going to stay on top of it.”