By Liam Verster

Twinning Highway 40

Joint partnership will see stretch of Highway 40 twinned

Feb 20, 2020 | 5:08 PM

The 19 kilometre stretch of Highway 40 south of the City of Grande Prairie will be twinned, thanks to a joint partnership between the County of Grande Prairie, the MD of Greenview, and the Alberta Government.

The project will see the highway twinned all the way past the Norbord plant. The project will also include a second bridge over the Wapiti River, and a vehicle inspection station.

Transportation Minister Ric McIver says the design and engineering work still have to be done before shovels can break ground. Though when that time comes, McIver says some of it can be done quickly.

“Some of the moving utilities, the utilities are where they are. So that’s something that doesn’t take a lot extra engineering work, it’s just a matter of locating them and moving them and perhaps building protections around them, and tree clearing. The right of way is there, so some of that stuff doesn’t take a lot of extra engineering.”

He says he’s excited for the project, adding that it’s been moved up several years, as it was on an undetermined schedule as to when work could be done on the highway.

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The work on the highway is expected to begin sometime in the summer of 2020, though no estimated dates could be provided as of yet.

An outline of the stretch of Highway 40 being twinned (Photo: Liam Verster)

Finance Minister, President of the Treasury, and MLA for Grande Prairie-Wapiti, Travis Toews, says the funding details and figures for the Highway 40 project aren’t available yet, but will be included in the Capital Plan in the 2020 Budget.

“The cost of this project would be identified in this Fiscal Plan, which is a Three-Year Fiscal Plan. The actual spend will correlate to the time line of the work being completed.”

In a release, the MD of Greenview Council say they have passed a motion to help fund up 50 per cent of the twinning project, up to $60-million. The funds will come from the road infrastructure reserves, and will be provided in a $30-million contribution in 2020, followed by a $30-million investment in 2021.

Reeve of the MD of Greenview, Dale Smith, says his municipality has been working with the Province for quite some time to try to bring the project forward, finding available options, and looking at timelines for financing the project.

“We just feel like it benefits a large portion of our MD, the industry that works in the MD, the people that travel through the MD. We’ve budgeted the money over a 2-year budget cycle, with some of the first year’s coming out of our infrastructure reserves, so that’s how we’re financing the first year of the project.”

Smith says he’s not viewing the funding as a cost-split, but as a complete project for the City and County of Grande Prairie, as well as the Municipal District.

He adds that this project will also have a tremendous effect on the Tri-Municipal Partnership and the future site of the eco-industrial area.

“Those investors that will be coming from a world stage, they know that they’re workers can get safely to a major portion of the distance going out there. The hill and the bridge are kind of the main stumbling blocks out there. So that’s what we’ve heard from some potential investors before, the safety of people getting there, and the ability to access down the highway.”

Smith adds that the Grovedale Volunteer Fire Department are the highest responding fire crews in the MD, and often have to respond to some “fairly nasty sites” on that stretch of highway, and this project may help reduce those calls.

Leanne Beaupre, the Reeve for the County of Grande Prairie, says the County is very happy to be involved in this project, which she’s been advocating for since she took office 15 years ago.

Along with the need to help move the province forward economically and invest in industry, Beaupre says it’s also important to the “human resource” as well.

“The community of Grovedale, the children that come to school and go back out, the ski hill that’s there as well. People that are commuting to those areas, as well as the traveling public that we have that we’re trying to promote tourism in the area. All of these really are synonymous with trying to make sure that we have the infrastructure that’s available to this area.”

She adds that this stretch of highway has caused a lot of issues to both industries coming and going between the County and the MD, and that it’s more than a highway, but a network corridor. The County has been very concerned about this area for a long time, and Beaupre says she’s excited to see this project come to fruition.

Beaupre did not have an estimate of how much funding the County would provide for the project.

The previous NDP Government had proposed a project that would twin this stretch of highway in December, 2018, but McIver says the UCP is committed to building the economy, and that the NDP had made “billions of dollars in unfounded promises.” He says through the partnership with the County and MD, this project will get funded and built.