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Industrial park turning lanes shelved until 2019

A 38-kilometre section of Highway 44 south of Westlock will be repaved this summer at a cost of $21.5 million, but the stretch in front of and the new turning lanes into the Westlock County Industrial Park will wait at least another year.
county turning lanes
Work on Highway 44 in front of the Westlock Country Industrial Park won’t go ahead until 2019.

A 38-kilometre section of Highway 44 south of Westlock will be repaved this summer at a cost of $21.5 million, but the stretch in front of and the new turning lanes into the Westlock County Industrial Park will wait at least another year.

When county administration met with representatives of Alberta Transportation last year the tentative plan was to repave the section of Highway 44 from Sandy Beach corner north to Township Road 594, about half a kilometre south of the industrial park, in 2017. Then the remaining portion of the highway adjacent to the industrial park to the town boundary would be completed in 2018.

However, the plan has hit some snags and will be delayed by another year.

“Things got delayed in the design and so the south portion was delayed until this year and the rest of the highway in front of the industrial park, that goes towards town, there was some delay because of design and there’s some property acquisition they have to work through,” said county CAO Leo Ludwig.

Ludwig noted the condition of the highway immediately south of town and past the industrial area was “pretty bad.” He expects there will be some ongoing crack-filling and patching throughout the summer.

“They’re going to have to do some maintenance there this summer to tide them over until next year,” he said.

Ludwig said he hasn’t seen the final design yet, but called his dialogue with Alberta Transportation “very positive.”

“Initially, when they were first planning on that stretch, they were looking at only one intersection on the highway and there’s three now and their initial plan was to close two of them and only leave one open. We had some discussion with them on what problems that created because that industrial park is landlocked on the other three sides, there’s no road access,” said Ludwig.

“From a safety perspective, it may not be the best idea to only have one entrance and exit to an industrial park. If you have an accident at that corner and there’s dangerous goods involved and you need to evacuate folks, how do you get out?”

It was decided through dialogue that the south intersection would also remain open, said Ludwig. The northernmost intersection will be closed as acceleration and deceleration lanes are constructed for the middle and south entrances.

The cost of the turning lanes will be split between the county and the province though Ludwig said he doesn’t expect to know the final numbers until the design work is completed. The final cost of the project won’t be known until the tender is awarded.

Work on repaving Highway 44 from Highway 642 to Township Road 594 is expected to last from May to October.

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