(PHOTO: Peter Read, OSCA, MLA Debbie Jabbour, and Mayor Melissa Blake announce new staging area at Parsons Creek. SARAH ANDERSON. Reporter. Copyright Rogers Media.)
In an effort to improve safety on Highway 63, the province announced Friday it’s building a new staging area for oversized loads just north of town at the Parson’s Creek interchange.
The new staging area will mirror the one south of town and will give drivers a location between site and downtown to rest and wait for bad weather to pass, improving safety for all drivers on the highway.
“The pullout is going to allow for more efficient movement of the goods that are needed by oilsands operators and others but perhaps even more important it’s going to enhance safety on Highway 63,” said Peace River MLA Debbie Jabbour who was speaking on behalf of Brian Mason, Minister of Transportation.
“It’s going to be an area where drivers can stop, check their brakes, make sure loads are secure, and where they can stop and have a rest stop,” she said.” It’s going to allow them to remove that big structure from the highway and the congestion and just make it easier for the rest of the community to travel through this area.”
That element of increased safety for all drivers earned the move a nod of approval from the Oil Sands Community Alliance.
“It will have a significant impact and there’s a couple of different ways that’ll happen. The first is, as they work through town and need to pull over and re-check their loads, so that they’re secure before they head up Supertest hill and head north, they’ll get the chance to go check the loads and rest,” said Peter Read with OSCA.
“But the other really significant time of year we’ve always talked about is winter time when there are often unexpected conditions on the highway. They need somewhere that they can pull off and wait for the maintenance crews to have some chance to get the road in a condition to drive on and that’s a place, after they’ve come through town they have somewhere to do that,” he said.
Jabbour said not only will the new staging area make the movement of goods more efficient, improve safety and improve quality of life in town it will also be good for the environment by reducing congestion. The other positive, she said, is the short-term creation of jobs with this project and with several others planned across Alberta.
“We’re supporting $34.8 billion over five years to help stimulate the economy, keep people working and upgrade or expand existing infrastructure,” said Jabbour. “Far beyond just the highway projects we hope to invest throughout Alberta in new and improved schools, hospitals, parks, seniors’ housing, things that will deliver jobs right across Alberta for skilled tradespeople, apprentices, architects, engineers, others, and then all of the industries that support these kinds of things.”
Mayor Melissa Blake applauded the move as an investment in the region that remains an area with massive amounts of activity and productivity despite the difficult economic times.
The province is “moving ahead with much-needed investment in our community probably at the time when we need it the most, and they’re doing in a way that understands that the only way that we can weather the storm is when we do work together,” said Blake.
She said building this new staging area follows the investments made to build the interchanges in town and the third bridge across the Athabasca and will have the same kind of positive impact. Blake said moving ahead with this project recognizes the needs of this community as it functions within the province and is putting those needs first.
Jabbour said part of the motivation behind the approval of the project was the fact that while Highway 63 serves our community, this community fuels the economy of the province and all of Canada.
“As you know, day and night, Highway 63 is continuous traffic and sometimes we’ve got huge commercial transports bringing the infrastructure parts, the technology, everything to keep the energy industry running smoothly. So, Highway 63 is vital to our province’s economy,” said Jabbour.
“The size of many of these transport trucks is something that doesn’t occur anywhere else in Alberta and I don’t think many Albertans really have a grasp of just how significant that impact is when you’ve got the gigantic trucks and structures moving through to bring the equipment up here,” she said.
Jabbour said that’s why it was so important the provincial budget include funding for this project. The tenders for construction haven’t yet been released so the exact cost of the project isn’t yet known but Neal Reynolds, Regional Director of Alberta Transportation, said it is in the millions of dollars.
He said the project would mirror the staging area south of town.
“So, a truck staging area is sort of that one step up from a rest area. There’s just extra room for the big loads and the number of trucks that would be utilizing the stop. So, there will still be washrooms, there’ll still be sort of an area for cars and RVs and there will also be a place for those great big vessels,” said Reynolds.
Construction on the new staging area is expected to start this summer and wrap up in 2017.
At the announcement Reynolds also confirmed that twinning work on Highway 63 is on schedule and that the final 1 per cent, or 3km, of road that’s left to be twinned will be completed by the end of June. However, work will still continue on the road for at least the next two summers as they lay more asphalt and make repairs to older portions of the highway.
