George Lee
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Macleod Gazette
Recounting four deaths in two recent collisions, Livingstone-Macleod MLA Chelsae Petrovic rose in the legislature last week to hear what the province is doing to make Alberta roads safer.
The loss of three junior hockey players near Stavely Feb. 2 devastated the region, said Petrovic. Families, teammates and communities are grieving lives “cut short far too soon,” Petrovic said.
“Albertans are voicing their concern for residents who depend on these roads every day,” she said.
The provincial budget tabled last Thursday so far earmarks no capital dollars to upgrade the intersection. But The Macleod Gazette confirmed Monday that the department is reviewing the site immediately west of the town before deciding on improvements.
Reviews typically look at physical and design factors like controls, sightlines and speed limits, along with data like traffic volumes and collision details.
A crash at the intersection 14 kilometres north of Claresholm killed three junior hockey players on their way to practice.
Caden Fine, 17, of Birmingham, Ala., along with two 18-year-olds from Kamloops, J.J. Wright and Cameron Casorso, played for the Stavely-based Southern Alberta Mustangs of the Alberta Division of the U.S. Premier Hockey League.
Transportation and Economic Corridors Minister Devin Dreeshen said that “our hearts are with the families, teammates and communities who are grieving during this unimaginable loss. No words can ease that pain, but what we can do is act as a government.”
The minister said that “safety is not a slogan,” adding that the government is delivering on investment, enforcement and engineering.
Dreeshen pointed to a safety fund of $13 million over three years to help municipalities improve high-risk intersections and roadways with measures like better signs, signal timing, lighting and road redesign.
The Alberta Traffic Safety Fund is for local roads and intersections, and it’s accessed through 50-50 cost-sharing grants from the province. Municipalities can’t pay for provincial assets with their own money.
Both highways and the intersection are owned by the province — not the Municipal District of Willow Creek, where the intersection is located, and not the Town of Stavely, which it serves.
Secondary Highway 527 extends a street in Stavely. It meets the four-lane divided highway on both sides at grade, a term for there being no overpass.
Drivers sometimes must look across the front passenger seat and anyone sitting there to check for vehicles with the right-of-way coming at them, turning and even passing each other. The speed limit along the stretch of Highway 2 does not drop from 110 km/h.
Unsafe trucking is another killer of those who use Alberta’s road network, Petrovic said.
She spoke of the death of an 18-year-old driver last summer when a tractor-trailer unit crossed the centreline on a secondary highway. The Macleod Gazette found no media mentions of the collision.
Albertans “expect professional drivers of heavy trucks to be properly trained and held to the highest standards,” the MLA said. She asked the minister about steps to identify, monitor and remove unsafe professional drivers from Alberta’s highways.
Dreeshen, the member for Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, said Alberta leads the country in improvements to commercial driver training and enforcement.
Alberta is “cracking down on the bad actors in the industry” and shut down five fraudulent training schools and 13 unsafe trucking companies last year. The province also recently conducted 470 audits and 149 investigations, issuing 184 penalties adding up to more than $100,000.
The government is removing unsafe truckers from roads “to make sure Alberta highways are as safe as they can be,” he said. “That’s what accountability looks like.”
Also on Petrovic’s agenda for day one of the spring session was a possible jurisdictional swap in Foothills County south of Calgary so the municipality can take over a stretch of Highway 2A that serves a burgeoning industrial corridor.
The swap would give the county direct control over a highway section about 10 kilometres long so it can react quickly to needs like new traffic controls and reduced speed limits.
Dreeshen was noncommittal, saying that “this government has a track record of investing in rural Alberta, and I’m looking forward to continuing on with other projects in Foothills County. We will be working with them in the coming days and weeks.”
