A provincial report on Highway 63 recommends better maintenance, more passing lanes, better enforcement and the introduction of photo radar to the troubling and often deadly northern highway.
Premier Alison Redford asked Fort McMurray MLA Mike Allen to write the report following the death of seven people on the highway in April. Allen's report comes with 22 recommendations, but focuses exclusively on the highway and does not discuss several highways in Sturgeon County that feed into the route.
Transportation minister Ric McIver said he is aware that will be a concern.
"That is always a risk, every time you build a specific stretch of road there are opportunities where you create a bottleneck."
He said the province's immediate focus is on Highway 63, but he recognizes there will be more work to do when the highway is twinned.
"We will have to consider the upstream and downstream effects of moving people and goods," he said. "We will deal with that in due course as well."
Upgrades to Highway 28, which meets 63 before heading south through Sturgeon County, are contemplated and some basic design work has been completed, but it is not on the province's construction schedule.
Report
Allen said his fundamental goal in writing the report was to reduce accidents, but he also recognizes its importance to the province's economy.
"It is very vital that this highway corridor is safe and that it can accommodate growth and development."
The government will respond to his 22 recommendations sometime in the next few weeks, but McIver made it clear up front that he did not support adding photo radar.
"It has been a long-standing policy of the provincial government not to have photo radar on provincial highways and I am not going to recommend changing that at this time."
Government estimates have half of the road being twinned within the next three years, but it would take as long as 11 years to twin the entire length.
McIver said Allen's report provides a way to reduce that to at least eight years, but he said that is only a starting point.
"This is not the end of the process, this is the beginning of the process."
