Manitoba under pressure to upgrade 17-kilometre Trans-Canada stretch

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This article was published 10/08/2022 (867 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government insists it hasn’t given up on twinning the last remaining undivided stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway in the province, after a grieving family called for safety improvements.

The government is facing pressure to widen the two-lane, 17-kilometre stretch between Falcon Lake and the Manitoba-Ontario boundary while a similar project goes ahead next door.

Ontario has started the first of a three-phase plan to divide some 40 kilometres of the Trans-Canada between the provincial boundary and the Kenora bypass.

After previous study, Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure “continues to explore specific options” for a twinning project, according to a spokesman for Doyle Piwniuk, minister of transportation.

“For the remaining untwinned section of Highway 1 on the eastern side of Manitoba, from Falcon Lake to the Ontario boundary, MTI will consider additional improvements to this section of highway as part of a future capital program,” the spokesman wrote in an email.

An average of 4,870 vehicles travel that section of highway every day, according to a 2017 traffic count.

NDP infrastructure critic Matt Wiebe and Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said the Progressive Conservatives should make twinning the Trans-Canada a priority, now that Ontario’s project is underway.

“There have been a number of tragedies on that stretch,” said Wiebe, the MLA for Concordia. “We need to move on this, and we need to move on it now. Ultimately, this is about saving lives.”

In 2009, when the NDP was in government, Manitoba’s transportation department studied the possibility of dividing the lanes, knowing Ontario was intending to do so, but no plans were announced.

Now that Ontario is moving forward, it is the “perfect opportunity” for Manitoba to do the same, said Wiebe.

Ontario’s project, which includes rock blasting and overcoming challenges posed by the rough terrain, shows twinning can be done in Manitoba, said Lamont (St. Boniface).

“It should be done, and I don’t understand the excuses for why it hasn’t been,” he said.

Lamont urged the province to reduce the 100 km/h speed limit on the undivided section. The maximum is 90 km/h on the Ontario side of the boundary.

“Even 10 km/h makes a big difference,” he said. “If (100 km/h) is not safe in Ontario, why is it safe in Manitoba?”

CAA Manitoba said Wednesday it would welcome any measures, including twinning the road and adding dividers, to improve safety for road users.

Earlier this week, the Manitoba Trucking Association said its members want the untwinned section to be expanded on the same timeline as Ontario’s project.

Last December, then-transportation and infrastructure minister Ron Schuler told The Carillon, a Steinbach newspaper, expanding Highway 1 is a priority for the government.

Schuler said Manitoba can’t begin its planning until it sees Ontario’s plans, and it would look to the federal government for funding.

He was responding to an earlier statement from a government spokesperson, who said the province had no immediate plans to twin the lanes.

After years of discussions, a major project to divide the Trans-Canada in northwestern Ontario, where it is known as Highway 17, is underway.

A spokesman for Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation said construction of the first phase — 6.5 kilometres from the provincial boundary to Highway 673 — began in June.

It is due to be completed at the end of 2024.

So far, Ontario has spent more than $31 million on that section, a spokesman said. Contracts for the remaining two phases have not been awarded.

The second section will be 8.5 kilometres from Highway 673 to Rush Bay Road. The final phase will be 25 kilometres to Highway 17A.

In a recent interview with the Free Press, the family of a Dryden, Ont., father and son killed in a head-on crash urged Manitoba to make safety improvements, including reducing the speed limit and twinning the highway, to prevent tragedies.

Mark Lugli, 54, and his 17-year-old son, Jacob, died July 21, 2019, when an eastbound tractor-trailer driver swerved into their lane.

Their family was told the transport driver was trying to avoid crashing into traffic that stopped while a vehicle in his lane attempted to turn left onto an access road for cottages on Barren Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park.

After the crash, a group of Barren Lake cottagers asked the province to consider reducing the speed limit, among other measures.

The province cleared brush and put up signs to mark the road and ban parking on a gravel approach, but the speed limit was kept at 100 km/h.

“After a thoughtful review and with an intention to implement safety improvements, the department determined that there was no technical evidence to justify recommending a change in the speed limit,” the Manitoba transportation spokesman wrote in an email.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching