Opinion

Brandon Sun - PRINT EDITION

Plenty of bumps in the roads

By: Uncredited

Saturday, Sep. 29, 2012 | Comments: 0

Normally, highway signs are the responsibility of the provincial highways department.

But so is highway maintenance.

So when Boissevain-area motorists feel that Highway 10 isn’t up to snuff in their area, at least one local business owner and politician has taken matters into his own hands.

As reported in the Brandon Sun on Thursday, David Stead has put up a new sign on the west side of Highway 10, just north of the town.

“Welcome Americans,” it says, “Sorry About Our Crappy Roads.”

Stead, who owns Steads Farm Supply and is a councillor in the RM of Morton, says the condition of the highway is an “embarrassment for the province.”

And we tend to agree.

Of course, over the last couple of construction seasons, the province has had to deal with last year’s massive spring flood, which badly damaged roads and bridges across large swaths of the province.

According to a provincial spokesperson, more than half a billion dollars has been budgeted for improved roads and bridges.

That’s a mind-boggling amount of money — hundreds of dollars for every man, woman and child living in this province.

But clearly, it’s not enough to ensure smooth blacktop in every corner.

It’s not just Highway 10 near the U.S. border. North of Brandon, the same highway needs serious upgrades to handle the traffic that crowds it.

Elsewhere in Westman, oilpatch traffic has left many stretches of pavement looking more like they are gravel. And residents near Waskada are still waiting for a replacement bridge.

Further north, as climate change continues to wreak havoc on once-predictable seasons, winter roads may have to eventually be replaced by real roads.

And let’s not even talk about the “infrastructure deficit” resulting from years of put-off maintenance.

It all adds up to a massive bill.

Now, this isn’t a new issue. Folks have been complaining about crumbling roads since the horse-and-buggy days. And governments have been pleading poverty for almost as long.

In the tough world of not-enough-money and too-much-to-do, governments are forced to make choices — which roads will get fixed and which will get left for another year.

Stead blames it on the fact that he doesn’t live in an NDP riding.

We hope the province isn’t so short-sighted as to nakedly punish American drivers who happen to be coming into Manitoba through a riding that voted the ‘wrong’ way.

We believe it’s much more likely that there’s just not enough money to go around for all the work that needs to be done. And perhaps ‘friendly’ politicians are a little more likely to be able to get things done for their constituents.

But as Stead himself likely well knows, it’s not just politicians who get things done. Sometimes, it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

We’ll see if, in this case, squeaky wheels will also get to roll on smooth, new asphalt.

Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition September 29, 2012

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Normally, highway signs are the responsibility of the provincial highways department.

But so is highway maintenance.

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Normally, highway signs are the responsibility of the provincial highways department.

But so is highway maintenance.

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