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There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

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Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#211

Post by tra3 »

boborhythm wrote: post #179

Interestingly, there is a railroad line that goes north from Vancouver, through Whistler and Pemberton, but takes a different route than Highway 99 to get to Lillooet[1]. The highway (aka The Duffey, as it passes Duffey Lake) gains and then loses something like 1000m of elevation, whereas the railroad line is much flatter and travels along Gates Lake, Anderson Lake, and Seton Lake. There are dirt/gravel roads there t…

The Hurley and the Highline roads typically become snowmobile only. I saw on Facebook somewhere that there was a slide on highline and that a truck/trailer RV combo jackknifed in the middle.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#212

Post by myohmy »

TMWNN wrote: post #19
actually_a_dog wrote: post #16

As of a few seconds ago, this is the best route Google Maps can find to go from Vancouver to Kelowna: https://archive.md/we9X5 You have to go pretty far into the US on this route. Edit: Incidentally, asking for directions from Vancouver to Edmonton currently causes Google Maps to fail and give you a route that's closed: https://archive.md/7lLu4

Back to the historical norm! Until the Trans-Canada Highway, automobiles from BC had to enter the US to travel to eastern Canada. ( https://np.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/3rsv0k/til_that_unti... >)

Yeah we used to take the rail. Which is currently washed out. Which technically means BC can secede from confederation.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#213

Post by iso1631 »

bialpio wrote: post #187
arcticbull wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's essentially a peninsula, it still has road and rail links to Washington State.

It's effectively become a Canadian version of Port Roberts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington

Except Point Roberts (not Port) is just a residential area that isn't self sufficient in any way, and doesn't have thousands of containers arriving for shipping inland

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#214

Post by justsid »

skrebbel wrote: post #105
lhorie wrote: post #100

For just a bit of context/anecdata, I'm talking to my brother who lives in Vancouver and he wasn't even aware this was a problem. The road closure[0] on hwy 1 near Abbotsford/Chilliwack is a good one hour drive away from Vancouver core[1]. So while it sounds noteworthy for an entire city be technically flooded in, unless you were driving to the boonies, you're probably not actually impacted in any meaningful way. He…

I'm surprised there's no shortages yet because trucks can't get to the city. Or does Vancouver import most non-regional goods from the US (and not the rest of Canada) anyway?

The shortage is the other way. The rest of BC gets most of its produce from the lower mainland. I live in Kelowna (funny to see a local news site on here), and our stores have basically no produce because we can’t get anything from the lower mainland. Fun times.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#215

Post by hinkley »

myohmy wrote: post #204
hinkley wrote: post #165

Did Vancouver have a share in the drought that hit parts of the PNW last summer? I wonder if the dry/wet cycle has contributed to the instabilities.

I wonder this too. Vancouver Island was hit by a drought this summer and the (not unusual) torrent caused "water to flow where it has never flowed before" according to the road engineers.

Soil biology does some weird thing to soils in the boundaries.

Fungally dominated soils have a greatly increased mineral and water availability due to the meddling of the fungi in soil chemistry. But if you dry out fungi enough, they become hydrophobic, like sphagnum does, and this can increase the likelihood of flash flooding. In a forest environment, the fungi increase canopy, and the canopy mechanically slows the water. Except in deciduous forests in the winter, there is no canopy, only mostly-bare branches. Although typically BC and northern Washington seem to be overpopulated with conifers so that may not apply in this case.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#216

Post by [deleted] »

cf100clunk wrote: post #157
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Vancouver and had no idea until a friend in another country saw the news and asked me about it. Not to say people elsewhere in BC weren’t impacted (one town had to evacuate) but the media is not painting an accurate picture.

Perhaps the picture being painted by the media is not being accurately assimilated by you? This is real, and magnitude of the circumstances is dire.

[deleted]

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#217

Post by vkou »

bialpio wrote: post #194
Tiktaalik wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas comes through pipeline from refineries in Washington, so that should be largely unaffected. Lots of produce does come from the Fraser Valley which is impacted, but also North/South links to the USA (ie. we get heaps of produce from California). I assume there's a fair amount of food that is delivered from the port, as a lot of food packaging warehouses are near the port. Most trade in Canada is North/South aligne…

> we get heaps of produce from California Are the prices in line with what those products would cost in the US (e.g. WA state)? I was under the impression that the prices in BC were lower, so now I'm wondering if the price adjustment to account for local markets is significant or not, or if I misremembered completely.

Prices aren't very different than WA state for most goods, but that's because BC, just like WA, grows a fair amount of food in the interior.

Much of its out-of-season produce comes from California, but that's the case in WA, as well.

Things like cheese are very expensive in BC, but that's due to Canada's dairy tax situation.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#218

Post by Kranar »

leafmeal wrote: post #60
maybeOneDay wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but a city block isn't an entire city. If you read their comment again without prejudice you may be able to understand what they meant, even if it does require a little imagination.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if a city is composed of city blocks and by induction then a whole city is surrounded by roads.

When a premise leads to a false conclusion, you should reconsider your premise.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#219

Post by seryoiupfurds »

Scoundreller wrote: post #171
skeeter2020 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big issue is that the port in Vancouver is now essentially an island. Rail is impacted by this as well.

The CP mainline that washed out will take a while to fix, but the other mainline, CN, doesn’t seem to have taken any serious damage. They’ll definitely have some cleanup somewhere, but that happens after every storm. I hope the two have some mutual aid agreement to bypass over each others tracks.

As far as I understand it, they already share their tracks in routine service, using one westbound and the other eastbound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-track_railway#Direction...

> A similar example exists in the Fraser Canyon in British Columbia, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific each own a single track line - often on either side of the river. The companies have a joint arrangement where they share resources and operate the canyon as a double track line between meeting points near Mission and Ashcroft.[22]

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#220

Post by emodendroket »

ashtonkem wrote: post #197
emodendroket wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to when? It's not like hiking is some new fad.

Certain recreational activities are in fact new as hobbies, at least at scale. Skiing, mountaineering, and camping were once things you did out of necessity, not for funsies. For example, our records for recreational skiing stretch back basically 300 years. Mountaineering has been done practically forever, but as a mass hobby it’s also basically 250 or so years old. The idea that you’d do it for fun rather than as a…

Well, whether we mean the past century or the basically the entire existence of the United States, it's certainly much older than the GPS devices we're talking about, which was the sort of timeframe I had in mind when I said it is not a "fad." If we mean a couple hundred years then we could also call driving a car newfangled and faddish.
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