A few years ago, I went for a drive up Highway 39.
I tried to envision what the highway would look like with double lanes. It was a little hard to envision around Macoun; it was just a couple of years after the flood of 2011, and there was still a significant amount of water on either side of the highway.
Water remains on each side of the highway outside of Macoun, but it’s not as bad as it was previously.
Premier Brad Wall had recently announced the provincial government’s plan to twin Highways 39 and 6 from Estevan to Regina. Coupled with the twinning project east of Estevan that had been announced earlier that year, it meant the highways would be twinned from Regina to an area southeast of Bienfait.
I didn’t pop a champagne cork that day, but maybe I should have.
I had advocated publicly for the project. So had other reporters in Estevan. We recognized the need to have the highways twinned. So there was a special feeling the day Wall announced we would be having double lanes.
But that announcement belonged to the local residents who worked tirelessly to bring their vision of double lanes to fruition.
There was the Time to Twin committee, started by Marge Young, Lorelei Ireland and Marie Calder in 2009. Members had come and gone since that time, but the committee had dedicated so many hours to research, to lobbying efforts and to organizing public meetings.
All they wanted to see was a safer highway from Estevan to Regina.
Then there was the late Jackie Fitzsimmons. Just days before the premier’s announcement, she had organized the Heaven’s Flowered Highway initiative, in which she drove from Estevan to Regina and back, and filmed all of the memorials from Estevan to Regina for those killed in collisions.
It struck a chord with the public, and you had to wonder about the timing of Wall’s announcement. You can be sure the premier didn’t make a snap decision based on one person’s campaign, but he still made the announcement shortly after Fitzsimmons’ work was finished.
For nearly three years, the prospects for twinning looked good. Meetings were held and designs were unveilled. But alarm bells for twinning advocates had to be sounding in the last two provincial budgets, when the government announced its plans for a combination of twinning and passing lanes for the highways between Estevan and Regina.
Now it appears the government is proceeding with passing lanes. About 15 sets will be constructed, measuring two kilometres each. It means about 15 per cent of the highway from Estevan to Regina will have passing lanes.
But you can be sure it won’t be enough for the twinning advocates, who have viewed passing lanes as an illegitimate solution.
Twinning or bust, they’ve said from the outset. And they have a lot of people in the Estevan area who agree with them.
This is not to say that passing lanes can’t work. But it will be more difficult on Highways 39 and 6 than other highways in Saskatchewan with passing lanes, due to the volume of truck traffic.
A compromise might be needed. There’s a stretch of 10 kilometres of the Trans-Canada Highway that is twinned between Revelstoke and Salmon Arm in B.C. It does a great job of alleviating the traffic backlog for that stretch of Highway 1.
Perhaps instead of two kilometres stretches of passing lanes, the government should be looking at four or five kilometres of twinned highway at strategic locations.
The passing lanes might work on Highway 11 east of Regina, or on Highway 5 east of Saskatoon. But those highways have very different demands than Highways 39 and 6. They aren’t part of an international trade corridor with high volumes of heavy truck traffic.
I’m going to take another drive on Highway 39 and 6 to Regina soon. And I’m going to picture driving down a passing lane. I’ll think about being stuck behind three trucks before the passing lane begins, and being in one of those 11-vehicle convoys that Highway 39 is known for.
I’m going to think how two kilometres won’t be nearly enough to clear up the congestion.
And I’ll look forward to the day when the highway is twinned, even if that day is now further away than it’s ever been.
