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Meanwhile, strings of motionless traffic had coagulated on both sides of the pass, a harbinger of things to come. Surely those motorists muttered an expression that would become an everyday mantra for those brought to an unforeseen halt on this uber-wild stretch of highway: “What the hell’s going on now?”

Apart from those who call places like Revelstoke and Salmon Arm home, plus long-haul truckers, it is Calgarians for whom the mountainous stretch of the TCH is most vital. We are a wandering breed, and since our vacation compasses point west at a disproportionate rate, we have come to view the TCH as our road, our gateway to temperate climes, deep-snow skiing, lake life and, if we’re lucky, only occasional bouts of abject terror.

Therefore, if you recently found yourself slowly traversing the construction-dotted TCH—or worse, suffering through one of its, on average, 64 unplanned closures per year—your heart may have skipped a beat upon spying the B.C. government signs trumpeting tax dollars at work in what reads like a latter-day miracle: “Kamloops to Alberta Four-laning Program.”

Seriously? Is this something that could actually occur in our lifetime?

Spoiler alert: Be prepared to live a long time yet.

“Well, anything is possible,” says Jennifer Fraser when asked that question. As the Kelowna-based director of the TCH Four-laning program for B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, her remit is some 220 kilometres of the TCH (outside of the national parks) yet to be twinned. Whereas she acknowledges that no target date for completion currently exists, she points out that the government, including the recently elected NDP version, has given a high priority to the job. The only problem is how massively, nearly unimaginably, complicated that job turns out to be.