Transport Ministers unveil national highway plan; CTA not convinced

OTTAWA — A plan to add thousands of kilometers to Canada’s highway system will enhance the country’s transportation network, say government officials. But the Canadian Trucking Alliance isn’t buying it.

The Council of Ministers responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety made their announcement at a meeting in Calgary, following a report and recommendations by the National Highway System Review Task Force, which was led by Transport Canada and the New Brunswick Department of Transportation, with participation by all federal, provincial and territorial transportation departments.

According to the plan, approximately 4,500 kilometers of “feeder” routes and 5,900 kilometers of northern and remote routes will being added to the National Highway System (NHS), as well as approximately 500 kilometers of key intermodal connector routes and international border crossings that connect with “core” routes. Over 25,000 kilometers of existing core routes will also receive expansions and maintenance.

The Council also agreed with a task force recommendation that projects, which involve significant rehabilitation of pavements and structures, should be eligible for cost sharing. To be eligible for cost sharing, pavement rehabilitation projects on the NHS should be designed to extend pavement life by at least ten years. Rehabilitation may also be used to strengthen a bridge that will be subjected to higher than originally estimated traffic loads.

Gov’t kicking in for feeder and rural highway routes

But CTA chief Bradley, who for years has been calling for a federally funded national highway policy, is skeptical about the council’s ability to carry out its plan. “That just means even less of the system is funded,” he says. “Canada remains the only major industrialized country on the planet not to have a national highway policy, unless no plan and no funding is a policy.”

According to the task force report, Canadian transport officials based their report in part by studying US and Australia highway system models. While individual US states hold primary responsibility for operating the majority of the highway network, the federal government has provided funding support to the states for highway construction. In Australia, the Commonwealth has sole financial responsibility for construction and maintenance of the National Highway System.

The study proposes that additions to the NHS be based on evaluation of existing routes which connect to: Capital cities; major provincial population centres; economic activity based on population and labour force; and major land border crossings and ports with $2 billion worth of foreign trade and tourism.

In its review of the NHS route inventory, it became evident to the task force that a number of major intermodal facilities were not linked to the NHS, in spite of the fact that the eligibility criteria developed in 1988 referred to inclusion of routes which connect primary highways “with another transportation mode served directly by the highway mode”.

To address this concern, criteria were developed by the task force to assist in identifying major intermodal facilities, which should be linked to the NHS to promote modal integration.

There are some outstanding issues, however. While report states that review process undertaken by the task force was successful in building consensus on a proposed approach based on specific criteria and thresholds, the application of the criteria developed did not permit inclusion of two routes in Manitoba that did not meet the criteria for either Feeder routes or Northern and Remote routes, despite having significant truck traffic volumes.

“In this regard, analysis and evaluation determined that a number of routes submitted by other jurisdictions did not meet the criteria<' the report states. "However an ongoing review process for the NHS would provide opportunities in the future to review and reconsider the eligibility of roads that do not currently meet the criteria." It was also noted that the proposed NHS includes all of the original TransCanada Highway (TCH) with the exception of a single route -- Highway 105 in Nova Scotia. "While there was discussion of whether, as a basic principle, all highways that were designated TCH should be included in the National Highway System, no consensus was reached on a recommendation," the report states. The full report of the Task Force can be obtained at www.comt.ca