The level of maintenance that your road gets is based on its MOTI (Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure) classification. This most often comes up in winter regarding snow removal. If you have a concern about your road it’s helpful to know its classification. Here’s how you can find out.
Go to IMap BC and find the road you want to look at. Under Data Sources go to Add Provincial Layers.
Select:
* Transportation
* MOTI Linear Inventory
Click on Road Maintenance Class Summer, and also Winter
It takes a minute, but colour coded lines pop up.
This is where it’s a bit of a pain because there’s no definition for the colours. Go up to the FIND menu and select the rectangle tool and draw a small rectangle over a section of any line. At that point you should get two results in the left hand pane.
I selected a tiny bit of Keith Road, just above Cemetery. Then I clicked on Road Maintenance Class Winter, then on Sunshine Coast SA. Immediately the whole section is highlighted and I get details.
And now that you have 6 and D, what does that mean?
It’s another step, of course. You need to consult the highway-classification-definitions (PDF), which is the Rosetta Stone for local roads. Please note that these standards have not changed since 2003. (!!!!) Further, to the best of my knowledge, no local roads have been reclassified in recent years. You do not have to tell me that 6 (10-100 vehicles per day) is not a realistic classification for upper Keith Road.
Similarly, Reed Road between North Road and Payne Road is classified as 4C, which is 500 to 1,000 cars per day. Hah!
Just as a note, the black lines on the map above are 8F roads, which means they receive NO maintenance. Neighbouring property owners are responsible for maintaining those roads. (On the big map above you can see that a section of Stewart Road is not maintained.)
Details of service levels are contained in the contract between the Province and Capilano Highways, which determines the type of services and the frequency. More info on highway contracts is on the province’s website. And if you really long to dive into the details, you can look at the standard contract here.
