Chilliwack Mayor Sharon Gaetz welcomed the news but said highway widening is what’s really needed

The installation of variable speed limit systems may be a little like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg, but it’s better than nothing.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz said she’s grateful for the provincial government’s announcement to spend $25 million on the congestion-based speed limit systems from Abbotsford to Chilliwack, but the bigger issue is highway widening.

“[The provincial government] knows the highway needs to be widened,” Gaetz said Wednesday. “It’s a question of money and funding and how they could do that.”

The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure announced installation would begin this week on two variable speed limit systems on the 24-kilometre stretch of Highway 1 between Sumas River Bridge in Abbotsford and the Prest Road overpass in Chilliwack.

The idea behind the systems is to lower the speed limit to slow vehicles down before traffic reaches a stop-and-go situation, helping to reduce the number of collisions that occur when drivers do not notice vehicles that have stopped on the highway.