Drivers are being asked to slow down and the government is being pressured to speed up the twinning of Highway 63 after seven people died in a nightmarish crash on Highway 63 last month.
The busy highway, which is the main route north to the booming Fort McMurray oil sands from Edmonton, had 46 fatalities from 2006 to 2010. Fort McMurray-Athabasca MP Brian Jean and newly elected Lac La Biche-St Paul-Two Hills MLA Shayne Saskiw are both calling on the PC government to speed up the twinning of Highway 63.
Jean told the Post that one of the first things he did when elected to Parliament in 2004 was to introduce a petition to have Highway 63 twinned. While the pace of the road construction is a provincial decision, Jean said he’d love to “wave a magic wand” and have roadway twinned today.
“It’s about having the political will,” the MP said. “There are maybe four MLAs affected by Highway 63 – and 30 MLAs in Calgary and 36 in Edmonton. So will a ring road [around a city] that affects 26 MLAs be a higher priority than Highway 63? Basically, Alberta needs to look at their priorities, because the safety of Highway 63 is my number-one priority – I’ve been driving up and down that road for 45 years.”
ANOTHER 36 KM TWINNED BY 2013
Alberta Transportation spokesperson Martin Dupuis said that 33 kilometres of the 255 kilometre-long highway has been twinned since the government committed to the project in 2006. He added that an additional 36 kilometres should be twinned by next fall, which would still leave 186 kilometres yet to be twinned.
While Premier Alison Redford told national media that she intends to accelerate the twinning project, Dupuis couldn’t say how long it would take to twin the entire highway. The spokesperson said that land acquisition, pipelines, clearing boreal forest, and building on challenging muskeg terrain make the project an arduous one.
“There’s been lots of work done behind the scenes,” Dupuis said. “The commitment to twin this road is there – it’s always been there. The government has invested more than a billion dollars on Highway 63 and 881, and committed another $150 million this year.”
In the interim, Dupuis said the government has added more traffic sheriffs to patrol the road.
“Distracted, impaired, and speeding drivers continue to be an issue,” he said. “We have a campaign to promote safer driving. It’s not just twinning – it’s about telling drivers that everyone has a role to play to make Highway 63 safe.”
Dupuis noted that Highway 63 had 81.8 collisions per 100 million vehicle kilometres from 2006 to 2010, substantially lower than the provincial average of 107 for comparable roadways. A big chunk of those collisions, roughly 40 per cent, involved crashes with wildlife.
SASKIW SAYS PCS HAVE DRAGGED FEET
Lac La Biche-St Paul-Two Hills MLA Shayne Saskiw said the PC government could and should have done a lot more to ensure the safety of the busy northern artery.
“To say they’ve been going at a snail’s pace would be complementary,” Saskiw said. “We feel the northern part of the province contributes vast resource revenues and puts food on the tables of tens of thousands of Albertans. This needs to be a priority.”
And the companies that employ those thousands of Albertans have banded together to help their workers arrive to and from work safely. Todd Anderson, a director with the Coalition for Safer 63 and 881, made up of oil and gas and service companies, said they intend to hold the government accountable to its promise of twinning Highway 63.
“It’s unfortunate that it takes a horrible accident like this before people start paying attention to this problem,” Anderson said. “But driving these roads is the most dangerous part of any job in the oil and gas sector. People are getting killed – a lot more than any normal highway.”
DRIVERS NEED TO CHANGE ATTITUDE
While Anderson said he would love to see the highway twinned, he also wants to see an attitude change for the drivers who use the busy road. It’s not just oil sands workers who use Highway 63 – food, retail merchandise, building supplies, equipment, and other commodities travel up and down the road daily to service booming Fort McMurray, which is set to double to 200,000 people within two decades.
He’d find a supporter in Hal Pressling. The Plamondon Fire Chief’s crew were the first responders to the deadly crash north of Wandering River. The accident happened when a truck attempted to pass a cube van, causing a head-on collision. Seven people died, including a pastor, his wife and two-year-old son. A pregnant woman, an 11-year-old girl, and two unidentified adults also died in the crash.
“The only thing people can do is slow down – life is just too short,” Pressling said, who added that members of the Plamondon Fire Department took counselling to deal with the horrors of the fatal crash. “And with an accident like that, you’re not going to get a second chance. The highway isn’t twinned now, so people just have to drive accordingly to the conditions.”
