B.C.’s auditor general says the province is effectively managing its highway avalanche safety program, though he notes there are improvements that can still be made.

In a report released today, Michael Pickup says the audit found avalanche deaths on B.C. highways like the Coquihalla are rare and that the number of road closures due to avalanches are decreasing.

His audit looked at the Transportation Ministry’s management of highway safety and the efforts to keep avalanche-related road closures to a minimum. Pickup notes avalanche events are down to about three per year from a high of 42 in 1982.

“There haven’t been any avalanche-related deaths on provincial highways in the last 20 years,” Pickup said. “And over a similar time frame, both the frequency and duration of highway closures have shown a decreasing trend. That’s good news. But our audit also found areas the ministry can improve on.”

He went on to note that while the ministry has mapped 1,600 avalanche paths that pose a risk to drivers from early fall to late spring, its unclear when or if two-thirds of those map paths were last updated.

“Not all data on avalanche paths, road closures and incidents were recorded or up to date, which hinders performance monitoring and analysis,” he added.

Pickup says the Transportation Ministry has accepted the eight recommendations that he made in his audit aimed at improving highway user safety and reliability. Those include updating and recording information on avalanche paths, road closures, and avalanche-related incidents to better monitor performance and analyze trends.

You can read a summary of the audit here.

– With files from The Canadian Press