With no official plans for structural improvement, the future of Highway 881 running from Lac La Biche to Fort McMurray is still up in the air. The highway is still on the provincial government’ s radar though.
With no official plans for structural improvement, the future of Highway 881 running from Lac La Biche to Fort McMurray is still up in the air. The highway is still on the provincial government’ s radar though. Officials at the department of Transportation say that they are conducting an internal review of Highway 881.
“The internal review is to identify potential future locations for rest areas and climbing lanes on Highway 881,” said Melanie Nolan, a spokesperson for the department, adding that the department expects the review to be complete by the end of this year.
The internal review is not the same as a functional planning study with public consultation. The internal review will help the department evaluate roadside development permit applications from businesses looking to develop along the highway.
“It’ s just an internal study right now,” said Nolan. “There’ s no public consultation at this point, it’ s just to assist us in our engineering.”
In last year’ s provincial budget, plans to improve Highway 881 were deferred, but Nolan said that the department of Transportation is still looking into those improvements going forward.
“We had deferred previous plans for construction on Highway 881 with last year’ s budget, but we’ re going to revisit these plans in the future,” she said.
