Highway 1 is a provincial highway in British Columbia, Canada, that carries the main route of the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH). The highway is 1,047 kilometres (651 mi) long and connects Vancouver Island, the Greater Vancouver region in the Lower Mainland, and the Interior. It is the westernmost portion of the main TCH to be numbered "Highway 1", which continues through Western Canada and extends to the Manitoba–Ontario boundary. The section of Highway 1 in the Lower Mainland is the second-busiest freeway in Canada, after Ontario Highway 401 in Toronto. The highway's western terminus is in the provincial capital of Victoria, where it serves as a city street and freeway in the suburbs. Highway 1 travels north to Nanaimo and reaches the Lower Mainland at Horseshoe Bay via a BC Ferries route across the Strait of Georgia. The highway bypasses Vancouver on a freeway that travels through Burnaby, northern Surrey, and Abbotsford while following the Fraser River inland. The freeway ends in Hope, where Highway 1 turns north and later east to follow the Fraser and Thompson rivers into the Interior and through Kamloops. The highway continues east across the Columbia Mountains, serving three national parks: Mount Revelstoke, Glacier, and Yoho. Highway 1 enters Alberta at Kicking Horse Pass near Banff National Park. Highway 1 was preceded by several overland trails and wagon roads established in the mid-to-late 19th century, including the Old Yale Road in the Fraser Valley, the Cariboo Road, and the Big Bend Highway. The provincial government designated Highway 1 in 1941 on a portion of the Island Highway between Victoria and Kelsey Bay as well as the Vancouver–Banff highway. It was incorporated into the national Trans-Canada Highway program, which was established in 1949 and completed in 1962. Other sections of the highway were realigned in later years, including a new freeway in the Lower Mainland that opened in the 1960s and 1970s and was numbered Highway 401.
