EDMONTON, Alta. – On the night of the Alberta budget, Grande Prairie County reeve Roy Borstad and his wife flipped between television station newscasts to hear some information on money for rural roads.
They’d heard a rumor money was being directed to rural roads, but there wasn’t a mention in the urban-based news reports.
While the $100 million announcement of more funding for roads may not have been important for the main centres of Calgary or Edmonton, it was much-sought-after news elsewhere.
“That’s fantastic,” said Borstad when he heard the news.
Read Also
Man charged after assault at grain elevator
RCMP have charged a 51-year-old Weyburn man after an altercation at the Pioneer elevator at Corinne, Sask. July 22.
A combination of heavy oil truck traffic, wet weather and road construction funding cuts from previous years meant the roads in the northern Alberta county were in desperate need of repair.
“The past two years have been devastating. The high resource area has really hit us hard,” Borstad said, referring to the extra trucks on the road from the oil and gas activity.
The county didn’t have any money allocated for road construction this year because of previous government cuts to municipalities.
The one-time $100 million injection of cash should go a long way to helping the municipalities, said transportation minister Walter Paszkowski.
Out of the total, $15 million will go directly for rural road repair. Half of it will be split among all the municipalities and the other half will be directed to northern municipalities with more than 150 percent of normal rainfall.
Peace country gets share
Most of that money will be used to reshape roads and replace gravel in the Peace River country and municipalities around Athabasca and Lac La Biche.
The money is still short of the government’s own estimates that between $210 million and $250 million is needed to keep Alberta roads in shape.
Paszkowski said $100 million is still “a pretty significant amount.”
The $100 million is divided among several projects:
- $32 million to the Rural Transportation Grants Program to maintain roads damaged by growing truck traffic and wet weather. About $4 million of the money will go to Metis Settlements and $3 million for grants to transitioning municipalities (former Improvement Districts).
- $25 million to continue twinning of the North-South Trade Corridor within Edmonton and Calgary.
- $25 million to allow cities to tender projects earlier than their budget deadlines allow.
- $18 million will be used for urgent requests including resource road improvement, street improvements, municipal wastewater projects and the Rural Gas Program.
