As the ribbon was officially cut on the $48 million Highway 43X bypass, both the City and County of Grande Prairie are pushing the Ministry of Transportation to make the twinning of Highway 40 a top priority.
“I heard a consistent message, in terms of bringing people together from the county, city and members of the business community that there are improvements that still need to be done to Highway 40 south of Grande Prairie,” says Minister of Transportation Ric McIver. “We will consider those carefully as we go forward.”
Last year, the NDP announced plans to start twinning the highway with construction scheduled to kick off in 2022. However, since the announcement, no further details have been released.
County Reeve Leanne Beaupre says she and her fellow councillors had the opportunity to push for information, and she hopes a recently released study will help get the answer they desire in the not too distant future.
“We did have a chance to speak to him about the connections and links that are also going to be beneficial, and one of those is the economic benefit analysis we tabled last week,” says Beaupre. “That will help the government make decisions that are very important to this region, and Highway 40 twinning and the bridge is one of them.”
The economic impact study states that twinning the first 19-kilometres of Highway 40 south of Grande Prairie could generate as much as $483.7 million in economic benefit for the area over 30 years, from 2022 to 2052.