The Lougheed Highway Through Maple Ridge Is a Missing Link That Has Been Missing for Twenty Years.

The four-lane gap between Maple Ridge and Mission on the Lougheed Highway is one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the Fraser Valley. Every government has acknowledged it. None has fixed it.

Experienced Maple Ridge drivers know the stretch. Where the Lougheed narrows east of town, where the sight lines compress, where passing becomes a calculation rather than a certainty. Where the logging trucks and the commuters and the recreational vehicles share two lanes that were not designed for any of them at the volumes currently using them.

The missing link on the Lougheed Highway east of Maple Ridge has been on every regional transportation priority list for the better part of two decades. Assessments have been done. Alignments have been studied. The case for the upgrade has been made repeatedly, compellingly, and without meaningful result.

People have died on this road. The accident history is not ambiguous. The risk is not theoretical. It is the daily reality of everyone who commutes through this corridor — east to Mission and Abbotsford, or west into the core of the Lower Mainland.

The province owns this highway. The province sets the capital priorities. And the province has consistently found reasons — other priorities, budget constraints, environmental review timelines — to defer the project that would make this road safe.

Maple Ridge's residents are not asking for a highway to nowhere. They are asking for the completion of the region's primary east-west arterial to a standard that reflects the population it serves. That is not an unreasonable request. It has simply gone unanswered for too long.

Share this story