Province commits $12M for intersection

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/01/2024 (722 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DAUPHIN — The Manitoba government has committed to spending $12 million to improve safety at the intersection where 17 Dauphin-area seniors were killed last June when the bus they were in collided with a semi-trailer.

The announcement, made during a press conference in Dauphin on Monday by Premier Wab Kinew and Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Lisa Naylor, followed the release of an independent safety report on the intersection of the Trans-Canada Highway and Highway 5, just north of Carberry.

Three intersection improvement options were presented in the report, prepared by WSP Canada Inc. They include a roundabout, widening the median at the intersection, and a new “RCUT” intersection design that is widely used in the U.S. in which drivers turn onto a main road and make a U-turn at a one-way median.

The premier said the next step will be collecting public input and feedback on the three options, a process that will take about six to nine months.

Kinew said input will be sought from people in the agriculture and trucking industries, as well as those affected by the crash and those living in Carberry and Dauphin, for a new intersection design that will be a template for future intersections in Manitoba.

“We leaned on the expertise of engineers, folks in the department of transportation and infrastructure, and really used data and evidence to guide the narrowing down of all the options that were on the table down to these three scenarios,” Kinew said.

“And now we’re asking for your help from people in Carberry, in Dauphin and across Manitoba — we want to make our Manitoba highway network safer, and so we’re asking for your input.”

Construction for the option that is decided upon is expected to begin in late 2025 and completed in the fall of 2026.

Traffic signals and lowered speed limits were options that were considered by the report authors, but evidence in the report suggested that those measures would not be effective at this intersection.

“Traffic signals, despite popular ideas, aren’t always safer,” Naylor told reporters.

“And they’re not always safer on a highway where the speed limit is 110 kilometres an hour.”

She added that the province was taking a safety approach that factored in how drivers actually behave, regardless of what the rules of the road are, and the goal is to avoid the most severe outcomes. Reducing the speed limit through a specific area has not been shown to be effective without significant changes to an intersection or surrounding area, the province said.

While an interchange or overpass at the intersection could also be implemented as a safety measure, the province sees that as a long-term solution with a 20-year-plus timeline and a cost estimate of around $100 million, while one of the three options would be a “medium-term” improvement to reduce collision risk.

The report did not take into account the June 15, 2023 fatal collision or another crash at the same intersection six weeks later that sent three people to hospital, but was based on an analysis of 29 collisions that occurred at the intersection between 2012 and 2021. It found that 45 per cent of the collisions involved fatality or injury, which suggested that high-severity collisions are a problem at the intersection. Of the 29 collisions, there was one fatal collision, 12 injury-related collisions and 16 causing only property damage.

The majority of injury-related collisions had predominant contributing factors of either failing to yield the right-of-way or leaving a stop sign before safe to do so, the report said.

The report also identified seven key road safety issues at the intersection, including the narrowness of the median, which does not allow transport trucks or buses to stop within the median to cross the highway in two stages, and the lack of ability to make left turns easily.

The report said that long and heavy trucks account for 28 per cent of the traffic and 18 per cent of left-turning traffic in all directions.

While the premier said the report showed that the safest option is the roundabout, while the RCUT intersection is comparable to an interchange in terms of safety, he said the province wants public feedback on what model to implement.

An RCUT intersection was constructed last fall at the intersection of Highway 16 and the Dalmeny Access Road, the province of Saskatchewan says on its website.

A Manitoba transportation and infrastructure standards review after the fatal crash resulted in short-term improvements that have already been completed, such as “important intersection” signs with flashing amber lights, additional speed limit signs to reinforce the 100 km/h speed limit, and a refurbishing of rumble strips and pavement markings.

The province shared the results with family members who lost loved ones in the crash before releasing the report publicly in the afternoon.

“If you lost a loved one or if you went through this terrible tragedy, I think our government owes it to you to tell you first about what the next steps are going to be,” Kinew said at the news conference. “Many of us can only imagine what took place on that day.”

Adrienne Zurba, who lost her mother, Claudia Zurba, 87, in the crash near Carberry in June, told reporters that she was pleased that the province shared information with the affected families first and was pleased with the information that she heard.

“Changes have to come and what they brought forward today, I’m happy with it,” Zurba said. “It does give me some peace.”

She spoke about the trauma from the day of the crash and said she still becomes emotional whenever the topic of the crash comes up.

“We are reserved in a way because of what we can always open up inside of us, because we were traumatized the way we all were,” she said speaking of herself and other family members who lost loved ones in the crash. “It’s really hard to keep that calm down.”

Zurba’s son, Mitchell Yakielaskhek, shared the same sentiment, as he lost his nana that day.

“The grief hits again, it’s just hard to deal with,” he told the Sun. “You’re just reliving that accident and that day and what you were doing.”

But he said he was pleased with the province’s announcement.

“It’s reassuring that they want to fix that intersection and make it safer for everyone else, so that’s good to hear,” he said. “My hope is [that] one of those three options, they do their homework, and they find the best one that works for that intersection.”

Yakielaskhek said he was in Dauphin on Monday to help support his mom, that the loss has hit her hard and the grieving process takes a lot of time. He said he will advocate for his mom to take part in the province’s public consultation process to decide on an option for the intersection.

“I know that it’s very close to her heart,” Yakielaskhek said. “And she wants to make sure that everyone else is safe and that this tragedy doesn’t happen again.”

During Monday’s announcement, Kinew also promised to provide provincial funding for memorials in Dauphin and at the intersection near Carberry.

Dauphin Mayor David Bosiak, who attended Monday’s conference, told the Sun that he was pleased with the premier’s announcement to help with funds for a memorial. He said the City of Dauphin was approached by five families about the possibility of a memorial in CN Park on Main Street and the city manager is working with the group to have a memorial in place in time for the anniversary of the crash this year.

“We’ve had a great conversation and we’ve created a bit of a working group,” Bosiak said.

» gmortfield@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @geena_mortfield