A Prince Rupert company has taken it upon itself to map a potential route for a Prince Rupert to Vancouver coastal highway with the hope it will spark a conversation on better access to the Lower Mainland for North Coast residents.
Pedersen-Gruppen Enterprises (PGE) has dubbed the project the Pacific Fjords Connector as it would ultimately connect to the Sea to Sky Highway (Highway 99), which connects Vancouver to Pemberton via Squamish and Whistler.
The concept is not an approved government project nor will the completed map be a shovel-ready highway plan.
“The project has always been about starting a conversation, not presenting a finished plan,” said Gabriel Gruppen, co-owner of the company.
It is not just a casual effort, however. PGE has hired Gemunu Ranasinghe — a professional highway design engineer certified in Autodesk Civil 3D for Infrastructure Design — to map the potential corridor
Highway 16 is Prince Rupert’s only road connection to the rest of British Columbia, leaving the city vulnerable when wildfires, landslides, avalanches, crashes, or severe weather close the corridor. BC Ferries offers a marine link to Port Hardy, and Air Canada flights operate through Digby Island. Both can be expensive and subject to schedules, weather, and capacity limits.
For Prince Rupert, transportation is not an abstract issue. Residents have faced delays in obtaining essential goods and services. With most goods arriving by road and rail, these short interruptions could quickly escalate into longer-term hardship.
The route-mapping effort asks whether Prince Rupert and the North Coast should continue to rely on limited routes or if it is time to imagine a more resilient future.
Data presented during a recent meeting suggested the Bella Coola-to-Kitimat portion could be about 352 kilometres. The larger concept connecting the North and Central Coast to the Lower Mainland could be roughly 800 to 900 kilometres. Those numbers remain early estimates, said Ranasinghe.
About 40 per cent of the concept could potentially use existing forestry roads, according to PGE. The remaining sections would require more investigation.
According to the Province of B.C., resource roads may be deactivated when they are no longer needed or when they are too costly to maintain. The province also says some non-status roads on Crown land are not maintained or inspected and may be deactivated if safety or environmental issues arise.
Those involved say the current mapping stage focuses only on detailed slopes, valleys, bridges, tunnels, and road alignments. These questions would matter if the idea moved into a formal feasibility process.
For now, they say the purpose is to show that big regional ideas need somewhere to begin.
“Big ideas start somewhere. A map can be a starting point, so people can start to think more about community resilience,” said Pedersen.
The discussion also reflects local challenges familiar in Prince Rupert. Residents use trails, backroads, and informal access routes that local government finds difficult to maintain or assume liability for.
Groups such as the Kaien Island Trails Society have shown how community stewardship can help maintain access when public resources are limited. Those involved say the Pacific Fjords Highway concept raises a similar question on a larger scale.
One question is whether some temporary or industrial roads could be managed more intentionally over time,
“Any future discussion would need to include the people and communities whose lands, waters and lives could be affected. A project of this scale would require meaningful conversations with First Nations, local governments, environmental experts and communities long before any formal proposal could move forward”, said PGE .
For Prince Rupert, the significance may be less about whether a road is built soon and more about the energy created by asking: What if the North Coast had more options?
The company hopes its work will encourage others to take that question seriously, not as a finished plan, but as the beginning of a more comprehensive discussion about service linkages, accessibility and what might be possible for the region in the long-term.