A ribbon cutting ceremony in October, marked the official opening of three new passing lanes west of Prince Albert. (Nigel Maxwell/paNOW Staff)

By Nigel Maxwell

Highway safety

Year in Review: Highway upgrades west of Prince Albert

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As 2021 draws to a close, paNOW is looking back on the most important and impactful stories of the year, as selected by our reporters and editorial staff.

Traffic and safety related concerns west of Prince Albert would result in a number of government announcements, including the opening of some new passing lanes, and confirmation a stretch of highway just west of the city would be twinned

A ribbon cutting ceremony in October, marked the end of work on three sets of passing lanes on Highway 3 west. The $9.1 million project was officially announced by the government in the Spring of 2020.

Highways Minister Fred Bradshaw explained that with a number of big announcements recently from companies like Paper Excellence, it’s become even more important to ensure there is a safe and reliable transportation system.

“We are going to have a lot more logging trucks going on there so this is going to make it a lot safer for the people who are commuting back and forth between Shellbrook and also for all the trucking companies that are going to be operating,” he said.

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According to statistics provided earlier in the year by the Reeve for the Rural Municipality (RM) of Buckland, there has been 414 collisions on Highway 3 between Prince Albert and Shellbrook in the last decade.

From those, 67 have resulted in some form of personal injury and there has been five fatalities, including the three lives lost just before Christmas last year.

Less than two kilometres from where the MLAs gathered for the ribbon cutting ceremony, was a vigil marking one of those deaths.

Twinning work next year is expected to help reduce the number of crashes west of the city. (File photo/paNOW Staff)

The other piece of the puzzle was the announcement last spring, as outlined in the 2021-2022 provincial budget, that approximately eight kilometers of Highway 3 will be twinned between Prince Albert and the Shell River Bridge.

The government tendered the project in the fall and the construction work is expected to start and finish in 2022.

This came on the heels of several calls for action from locally elected officials, as well as a young woman who nearly lost her life.

On Nov. 22, 2018, Alexandra Zbaraschuk suffered significant injuries after her car was T-boned by a westbound semi at the Whitford Road intersection. Zbaraschuk was just 16 at the time.

Years later, she wrote a personal letter to the premier asking for a commitment by the government to twin a 10 km stretch of Highway 3. In her letter, she explained how the morning traffic was heavy, roads were icy and there was fog in the area.

“My car stalled as I was trying to cross into the lane heading into Prince Albert from R & W Custom Collision and the semi didn’t see me, hitting me on the driver’s door at highway speed,” she wrote.

Following the crash, Zbaraschuk spent the next three weeks in the pediatrics intensive care unit (ICU), at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital, before getting transferred back to Prince Albert.

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nigel.maxwell@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell