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Highway twinning teams taking first tentative steps

The project is till in its infancy stage, but it will grow from planning to construction phases within a determined schedule.
Highway twinning
An open house was held in the spring to detail plans regarding the twinning of Highway 39 between Estevan and Bienfait. Now a committee has been formed to iron out the logistics of adding lanes from North Portal to Regina.

The project is till in its infancy stage, but it will grow from planning to construction phases within a determined schedule.

Having Highways 39 and 6 (south of Regina) feature four traffic lanes between North Portal and Regina, a distance of about 300 km, is no minor job, but the process is underway.

One of the early baby steps was taken Sept. 23 when planners, consultants and engineers representing the provincial Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure met with a group of city, town and rural municipality representatives whose communities will have a vested interest in the project as it rolls out within the next few years.

Roseanna Semchuk, spokeswoman for the ministry, said a series of open houses will be set up in stages once more information emerges.

The ground work is literally ground work. That means one of these first steps is to determine exactly where the new lanes will be placed and how these lanes will intersect with community entrances and exits. There will have to be environmental assessments made and utility concerns to address, well before any land is purchased.

“The study will focus on the route and that will include such things as which side of the community this highway will pass through or pass around,” Semchuk said.

Preliminary work will take the next several months as the ministry receives feedback from the public representatives and then, the general public in total.

Semchuk said there are at least 25 rural municipalities affected by the expanded highway project, along with the cities of Estevan and Weyburn and several towns and villages near the route.

“So we will listen to the communities, set schedules and central locations for open houses and public consultations before anything like right-of-way purchases are proposed. The utilities that have to be considered are everything from power lines to railway tracks. So it can become a complex process at times,” she said.

Earlier this year it was announced that the heaviest traffic zone in this stretch of highway, the 12 to 14 kilometres between the Bienfait turnoff to Estevan, is first up on the list and land assembly is already in the mix. This stretch of highway sees as many as 6,650 vehicles on it per day.

Estevan’s City Manager, Amber Smale said she attended the initial session that was held in Weyburn and said there was a clear message received regarding how the ministry will see community involvement and the role it will play in the planning process. She said the project is expected to move ahead in sections, but it was too early to determine an exact starting date. The general feeling was a positive one throughout the room.

She added that tying the local truck bypass into the new configuration is already on the table.

Both Smale and Semchuk said preliminary plans and proposals could be ready by next spring if all goes well.

“The time line sketched out was helpful,” said Terry Keating, who was one of the council representatives for the R.M. of Estevan who attended the session.

“Paul Steel of Tetra Tech, the company that has been hired as conceptual consultants was pretty helpful in giving us a look at the various stages this will take and Stage 1 involves several things,” Keating said.

“At this stage, there isn’t an awful lot to share,” said Steel, noting that the planning process is just underway and the areas to be studied have just been established.

Those attending the meeting learned that the Estevan to Bienfait location study should be completed by the end of this year.

“We’re thrilled there is movement now. We know there are several pre-construction steps that have to happen and they’ll take a couple of years, but the stage is being set,” said Marge Young who heads up the local Time to Twin committee that has been lobbying the provincial and federal governments for seven years to have this specific stretch of highway made into a four-lane throughway since it is also a vital international trade link that has become an increasingly hazardous route to travel as resource-based businesses have grown in southeast Saskatchewan.

“We know about having to deal with the utilities, oil wells, farmland, businesses along the way. There are a lot of things that will have to be considered and we just hope that as a very interested stakeholder group, we can contribute to some of these open house meetings. Our survey and petitions have been forwarded to the highways ministers over the years. The last survey we did contained 106 pages of comments from those who use the highway regularly. We’re not there now to send out negative vibes to the new minister, Nancy Heppner, we just want her and the other representatives to know we’re very interested in drawing that highway line from North Portal to Regina and making this happen,” said Young.

“We also feel that the federal government has a stake in this as well due to the highway’s international importance and we’ve passed that along to MP Ed Komarnicki and I know he’s been making representation on our behalf at that level too,” Young added. “The interest level is high, so we’re anxious to hear anything of what is happening, even if it is just about these first few tentative steps. It’s a start and it’s a positive start.”

Based on current statistics revealed by the Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure, traffic counts between Estevan and Weyburn peak at just over 4,300 vehicles a day and from Weyburn to the Highway 6 intersection leading into Regina, it peaks at around 3,900 vehicles and then spikes up again on Highway 6 to as high as 4,800 vehicles per day, just before hitting the southern outskirts of the Queen City.