Highway 32's Upgrades in Budget
By Aasa Marshall
Prairie Post
March 28, 2008
Last year, to protest the state of the crumbling Highway 32, Gord Stueck from Leader put up a billboard.
"Highway 32 is renamed ...the No Way," it said. "No pavement + No gravel = No Road".
Since the new government took power Stueck has had the billboard in his garage, waiting to see if he would have cause to put it back up. Now he's thinking about cutting it up to make shelves.
Minister of Highways Wayne Elhard announced with this year's budget that Highway 32 will be rebuilt from Shackleton to Prelate. The project will take three years.
It's welcome news for communities along the highway, who lobbied the previous government long and hard to have it fixed.
"I'm absolutely delighted," said Stueck, who drove to Regina for the budget speech. "...I'm not surprised. If you have a good critical look at the condition of the highway and the economic activity around here, the sooner the better. I think this government recognized that."
Stueck and a group of people from Leader started pushing for the road to be fixed in 2004. They started a website, sold "I survived Highway 32" bumper stickers, and made a "Pothole of the Month" calendar, featuring scantily-clad residents, that sold worldwide. Though it took a change in government to see the results, Stueck believes their efforts made an impact.
"It just goes to show, I think, that sometimes you've got to really kick up a fuss to get anyone to pay attention," he said. "Once you've got their attention, you can make a reasonable argument."
Minister Elhard said the Ministry plans to rebuild the portion of highway from Shackleton to Lancer this year, from Lancer half way to Prelate next year, and the remaining portion in year three.
"This is a commitment to rebuild the road completely," Elhard said.
Also included in the highways budget for the southwest is the completion of Highway 37, from the Frenchman River Valley to Climax.
That highway is significant to the economy of the province, Elhard said, because it ends in a U.S. border crossing. By designating Highway 37 a primary weight road, the government hopes to increase traffic at the Climax crossing, and eventually convince the federal government to increase the border's hours of operation.
"The Climax port is not utilized to the extent that would ever justify 24 opening, but that doesn't mean we couldn't work toward extended hours," Elhard said. "I think that should be our first goal, to make use of that highway and that port in significant numbers so that we can justifiably ask Canadian Border Services and the federal government to extend the hours of operation say to a consistent 12 hours a day."
Elhard had hoped the Ministry would have a five-year plan in place for highway improvements across the province, but said at this point only years one and two are in place. The Ministry is working on that plan, that will assess which highways are the most important to the economy, and prioritize the repairs.
"Rather than rush it we would rather get it right," he said. "We're still going ahead with the five year plan, we're just not going to roll it out in its entirety right away."
Province-wide, the 2008-09 budget for transportation is $513 million. That's equivalent to 140 per cent of on-road tax revenues, and a 15 per cent increase from last year's budget.
"We have such a huge challenge ahead of us. Our infrastructure has deteriorated over many years of neglect," he said. "...We would never get caught up if we were investing less than we're investing today, and that's the problem."
There were other announcements including 92.5 km worth of upgrades on thin membrane surface highways to pavement (grading and paving), including Highways 32 and 368.
There's also 284 km of resurfacing projects to preserve the quality of our paved highways, including a project on Highway 1 east of Maple Creek that uses a combination of crumb rubber from recycled tires and asphalt to provide a superior highway surface.
Reprinted with permission of the Prairie Post.
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