Premier Alison Redford was in St. Paul Saturday morning as part of her Building Alberta 2013 Tour, and took a moment to speak about the infrastructure needs affecting northern Alberta.
A key aspect that was discussed involved highway infrastructure sustainability, as Highway 63 has become an issue due to a high volume of industrial traffic, and Highway 28 is feared to become just as worse in the coming years.
“One of the reasons that we have been able to move ahead with projects, is because we've been able to anticipate not two years out or three years out or four years out what the situation is going to be, but our success will come when we can anticipate 10 or 15 years out,” she said, adding that the Minister of Transportation is working toward “creating an integrated regional road network in this part of the world” to ensure situations like Highway 63 can be resolved promptly in the future.
St. Paul Mayor Glenn Andersen suggested the inclusion of a toll booth on highways that see a great deal of industrial traffic, and Redford said that the Government of Alberta is committed to looking into alternative financing models, as long as they are viable.
“One of the reasons we were able to move ahead with Highway 63, is that we were able to think differently about how to finance our roads. We know that roads are critical, not only for economic growth in the oil patch but also for agricultural services in this part of the world,” said Redford. “So we're committed to making sure that the road system continues to be strong. We will look to alternative financing models, as Wayne (Drysdale) always reminds me, when they make sense. We want to make sure that we're getting good value for taxpayer dollars, but it's certainly what we've considered.”
Redford added that the province needs to have a system in place “that's going to allow us to deal with immediate infrastructure needs” as they arise.
“We're not presuming that we delay infrastructure planning. In fact that's exactly one of the reasons that we structured our budget the way that we did this spring, so that we could deal with immediate infrastructure needs,” said Redford. “We have a commitment to building the infrastructure that Alberta needs today, and putting a plan in place to build it 10 or 15 years from now just isn't good enough. So we'll make that commitment to make sure that those issues are being dealt with before they become problems.”