British Columbia provincial highway 18 is a short, 29 km-long main vehicle route on Vancouver Island, connecting the city of Duncan on the Trans-Canada Highway with the community of Youbou, on the north shore of Cowichan Lake. The highway first opened to vehicle traffic in 1953, and was re-routed to a straighter and wider alignment in 1970. A 90-km/h speed limit is in effect for the majority of the route.
In early 2004, a proposal was brought forward to extend Highway 18 west from Youbou, all the way along existing logging roads to the community of Port Renfrew on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, as a way of re-routing traffic from the northern part of the Island to Victoria in case of a bad accident or any other extraordinary event forcing a closure of the Malahat, a steep section of the Trans-Canada Highway just north of Victoria.
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