Four-laning around Stoney Flats Road is expected to begin this summer with the project now out to tender, the B.C. government said Tuesday.
A spokesman for the province told The Daily News the call for tender will be up by Friday on the B.C. Bid website, bcbid.gov.bc.ca, with the project open to bidding for four weeks.
The start date will be set by whomever the contract is awarded to, but the government anticipates work will begin this summer, the spokesman said. There is no anticipated completion date.
Phase 1 of the Pritchard to Hoffman's Bluff project, about 42 kilometres east of Kamloops, will widen three kilometres of a 6.1-kilometre section of the Trans-Canada Highway and upgrade the Stoney Flats intersection at Pritchard.
A 2.6-metre-wide-median with a barrier will divide the highway, and shoulders will be 2.5 metres wide.
A new intersection with a centre merge lane at Stoney Flats Road will consolidate two intersections and five private access roads.
Phase 2 of the project will realign and widen the remaining 3.1 kilometres of the highway through Hoffman's Bluff. It will go to tender in 2014.
Total cost of the Pritchard to Hoffman's Bluff project is $61.6 million. The federal government is contributing a maximum of $26.9 million and the provincial government $34.7 million.
The project is part of a plan by the B.C. government to spend $650 million over the next 10 years on the highway between Kamloops and the Alberta border.
Not all parts of the highway will be widened, so the public can help set priorities at www.bchwy1.ca.
