Farmers are happy the Manitoba government is boosting long-term road
funding and trying to get rid of the patchwork quilt approach to
transportation planning, say rural representatives.
“We think it’s very useful with the change in grain transportation
traffic to get the municipalities involved in identifying the strategic
roads that lead into the strategic highways that have to be developed
for grain movement,” said Stu Briese, president of the Association of
Manitoba Municipalities.
“With the declining population in rural areas, we’re maintaining roads
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in our municipalities that maybe we have to take a second look at,”
said Briese.
“Maybe we have to develop some market roads to a higher standard to
move grain through our municipalities and put less money into some of
the other roads.”
Manitoba transportation minister Steve Ashton announced the province
will spend a minimum of $120 million per year for five years on road
and highway construction. That is an increase of 16 percent over recent
highway funding.
It will also launch a planning process in which people who rely on the
road system, including farmers, will be able to develop a five-year
plan for highway spending.
Traditionally, highway spending has been in two-year horizons, which
has made it difficult to plan big projects or entice road builders to
participate.
Now, spending plans will be more attractive to road builders,
especially in rural areas, said Les Felsch, the chair of Keystone
Agricultural Producers highway and safety committee.
“This is a great idea. Most organizations have five-year plans. I’m
surprised it took the government so long to come up with one,” said
Felsch.
Road builders, once they know that a long-term building project is
planned for rural Manitoba, will be willing to haul their machinery out
to an area in the spring, and leave it there over winter, rather than
pay to haul their equipment out. The cost of hauling equipment to and
fro across the province every year has been a disincentive to road
builders, Felsch said.
The $120 million per year is firm, Ashton said, even if the federal
government provides less road funding in future. Until last year the
federal government has not provided direct roads funding, the minister
said. But now there are a couple of programs, including the prairie
grain roads program, that are injecting federal cash into the
transportation system.
Ashton said any new federal road spending will go directly to road
construction, rather than being swallowed by general revenues.
The province’s new spending commitment is only half of what the
transportation department says it needs to maintain the present system,
Ashton said.
That’s why the federal government needs to give up more of the gas
taxes it collects to the provincial governments. Manitoba would get
another $25 to $30 million in annual road spending, Ashton said, if the
federal government handed over the 1.5 cents per litre deficit
reduction tax it collects for a deficit that no longer exists.
Manitobans will soon be asked for their input on the government’s
transportation strategy.
