Carberry overpass the right decision

“This means the world. We’re beyond happy. They listened, they heard us and they’re putting in the safest alternative.”

— Debra Steen, Carberry-area resident

“I firmly believe this overpass will save lives. This is bigtime for our community.”

— Carberry Mayor Ray Muirhead

In the wake of the June 15, 2023 collision between a bus and a semi-truck that ultimately claimed the lives of 17 Dauphin seniors at the junction of Highway 5 and the Trans-Canada Highway, this paper declared that such a large loss of life must become a catalyst for change.

It would appear that our public call for change — which echoed the many concerns of area residents in and around the community of Carberry — was heard.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew made it official on Thursday in Carberry by announcing that a new overpass would be completed by 2030 and come at a cost of $100 million. Construction on the Trans-Canada and Highway 5 intersection will start in 2027 and take two and a half years to complete.

That’s a stark turnaround from the province’s position earlier this spring, when the province told local residents during one of the many public consultations held in the community that an overpass would be a long-term solution that would come with a 20-year-plus timeline and a cost estimate of considerably more than $100 million.

In fact, the overpass option was not offered by the province during the first public consultation meeting, although it was much talked about by local community members.

But in June, the transportation department, in conjunction with two firms hired to help weigh different options, said an RCUT design would be the best option because it would reduce the number of points where vehicles travelling in different directions can collide.

Yet that decision seemed not to take into account the fact that the McCain potato processing plant, located southeast of Carberry, creates a lot of truck traffic throughout the year, and would find an RCUT a difficult road to traverse.

The department’s position also butted up against that of the Town of Carberry, which formally endorsed a grade-separated interchange (overpass) as the community’s choice for improving the safety of the intersection.

And to make sure that the province heard their voices, 175 people lined the side of a gravel service road near the dangerous intersection in late May, holding signs that said “Safety not shortcuts,” “Listen to the people who use it every day” and “How many more accidents before they listen.”

We have said it before on this page — that particular intersection has been the scene of far too many dangerous and deadly collisions. And the residents who live and work in the region had a right to be heard.

As it often goes, we did not expect the province to back off from its position, thinking that political expediency and fiscal restraint would sway the decisions made at the top. To our surprise, Premier Wab Kinew took a different tack.

In July, Kinew went against his government’s own consultation process and said that the RCUT option was off the table. Only a few days later, he then publicly stated that the overpass was back in consideration.

“We want to look at safety but also something that has the public confidence in that safety,” Kinew told reporters at the time. “We’re going to take the time to get it right. And while we may have had one design that was ready to go, we’re now going to put in more effort on an alternative design … to show rural Manitoba that we’re listening to you.”

The fact that the province announced the overpass in this past week’s throne speech is nothing short of astonishing — in a good way, of course.

But it also brings up a few questions.

First of all, the timeline. If the highways department said it would take considerably more than $100 million and 20 years to build an overpass at that location, what makes Kinew and Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Lisa Naylor so confident that it can be done in two and a half years at the $100-million mark? Was someone fudging the truth, or does it come down to political pressure to get the wheels in motion?

Secondly, we have to wonder aloud what the Progressive Conservatives are thinking at this point in time, as it has become quite clear that Kinew is on a years-long charm offensive with rural Manitoba. We suggest that he’s also very aware of how these kinds of decisions will play out in rural Manitoba.

We saw it in the battle for Spruce Woods in the recent byelection, with millions of dollars poured into roads and projects in western Manitoba. And for a province that should be counting its nickels — since pennies are obsolete — spending $100 million on one busy intersection to protect a small town, a potato processing plant and those who frequent a First Nation casino would seem at a glance to be a little excessive.

They could have put in more restrictive speed limits in the eastbound and westbound lane approaches and a pair of stop lights at the intersection and called it done, at a far less exacting price tag.

Perhaps it’s worth remembering that far too many people have already paid a steep a price at that intersection. To his credit, Kinew seems well aware of that fact, too.

Whatever the case, local residents should be congratulated for standing their ground, and the province should be lauded for keeping an open mind.