Trouble can also be expected with some of the timber
trestle bridges. A number of these have trestle bents
supported on mud sills which rest on the gravel beds of
streams subject to flash flooding.

Some improvement will have to be made to the drainage
system, which is reported to have been inadequate over
‘some sections. Many additional culverts will be required.

The high cost of maintenance will be, in part, due to
the high wages that prevail in these northern areas even
in normal times. It is probable that the fantastic wages

paid during the war will tend to maintain labour costs at
a high level for some years to come.

Varying estimates have been made of the cost of main-
tenance. The Surveys and Engineering Branch of the
Department of Mines and Resources has been studying
this matter and had inspecting engineers on the high-
way during 1944, 1945, and 1946, and it estimates that
for the first year of public traffic, maintenance of the main
highway will cost $3,000,000. In addition, eight flight
strips and some 175 miles of access roads must be main-
tained, and these bring the total to approximately $3,500,000.
It is the opinion of the Director of the Surveys and
Engineering Branch that it will be costly to put the Haines
Cut-off road and that part of the Alaska Highway between
Haines Cut-off junction and the Yukon-Alaska boundary
in such a condition that routine maintenance costs will be
reasonable and economical. After essential improvements
in the whole system have been made it is estimated that
maintenance of the main highway, flight strips, access
toads, and the Haines Cut-off road will cost on the average
from $2,000,000 to $2,500,000 per year.

In 1943 it was estimated that the highway proper
could be initially maintained for some $2,500,000 per year,
but a lowering of the gtandard of construction in order to
ensure the completion of the road by the end of that year
has made an increase in maintenance costs likely.

Various plans have been suggested for developing
direct revenue from the highway for application to its
maintenance costs. Consideration has been given to a
system of tolls, special taxes on gasoline purchased in the

area, and other means of obtaining revenue from users of
the road.

Toll charges of any kind will meet with opposition from
truckers, business and trades people, residents and tourists.

In the experimental period recommended, no tolls or
assessments should be levied that would place this highway

in a category different from that of any other public highway
in Canada.

The expense of providing cabins and service facilities
as suggested, road patrols, and police protection has been
estimated at about $150,000 per year. The total cost of
maintenance and operation would thus be about $2,650,000

per year, after essential improvements referred to above
have been made.

On April 1, 1946, the Department of National Defence
took over maintenance of the highway, access roads, flight
strips, and the Haines Cut-off road in Canada from the
United States Army, and now maintains these roads as
military highways. In the meantime, the Department of
Mines and Resources (Surveys and Engineering Branch)
has been instructed by the Canadian Government to make
plans and preparations for the eventual assumption of
maintenance when this responsibility is placed with a
civilian department.

Raitway TRANSPORTATION

The early months of the war with Japan brought
sharply to the attention of the North American countries
the weakness of our continental position, more particularly
in the vulnerability of our northwestern and Arctic coasts
to possible enemy aggression from the westward. The
plan advocated at that time to rush construction of a
railway to connect the Alaskan ports, through the Alaska
Railroad, with the continental rail system came too late to
be of practical military advantage, since such a project
could not have been completed in time to be effective had

the enemy succeeded in landing forces on the North Pacific
mainland.

The conclusion of the war with Japan does not mean
that the need for adequate land communication through the
North Pacific Region to Alaska, primarily as a defence
measure, no longer exists; the future security of the North
American continent calls for a means of land transportation
capable of supporting adequate defensive measures in the
event of the closing of sea lanes by enemy action. Air
lanes and highways, useful and dependable as they are,
are sharply limited in capacity. It is only by rail that land

movements of large bodies of troops and equipment can
be effected and supported.

Although the topography of the coastal section of north-
ern British Columbia and southwestern Alaska, deeply
indented by the fiords and cross valleys characteristic of the
coastal mountains, eliminates the possibility of a rail route
along the coast, better conditions are to be found in the
Interior. It is a fortunate circumstance that the physio-
graphic features of the whole North Pacific area have a
northwesterly bearing so that, through the whole of the
interior plateau, from the inside of the Coast Range to the
Rockies, the general topography has this orientation, and
although the terrain presents difficulties it does not offer
prohibitive barriers to land transportation.

The outstanding and most remarkable physiographic
feature of the North Pacific Region is the Rocky Mountain
Trench, described in some detail elsewhere in this work.
This ancient trough is unique in that it forms from the
locality where it is crossed by the Canadian National
Railways near Prince George, B.C., to beyond the Yukon

border, an open valley almost mathematically straight and
of low gradient.

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