It'll probably never be twinned here. In fact, I'm not sure about this, but if my memory is correct there was pressure to reverse the twinning in Grand Falls-Windsor recently. And Whitbourne will burn Confederation Building if government tries it again there.
We're fucked. The TCH is the anchor for most of our growing rural communities (Bonavista being the only notable exception). They're all the same - a big box store area, and modern residential subdivisions surrounding. People move down from all our coastal peninsulas and communities to the nearest town on the interior TCH - that they can stomach, without having to live in St. John's. And those TCH towns are where the hospitals and everything have been built. It's a complete devastation of our culture. These TCH towns are just brutally ugly, awful, everyone drives everywhere, it's a shocking difference in the number of obese people even compared to St. John's, which is a car-dependent city for all but a few thousand in the core.
So that's our future out there. Bonavista will still exist, with its thousands of heritage buildings, and two dozen new businesses over the past two years, and artisan beauty product shops, and cafes, and Irish restaurants. But everywhere else outside St. John's will be bungalows and international fast food chains and big box stores. It's truly depressing.
If you ever visit Newfoundland, stop and look around with emphasis in Grand Falls-Windsor, Gander, and Clarenville. Compare that life to Corner Brook, Bonavista, and St. John's. It's horrifying when you realize the people in GFW, Gander, and Clarenville left places that could've been like Bonavista. It seems completely implausible that the same people you see waddling into Walmart in Clarenville were once the trendily-dressed people strolling around Bonavista.
I wish the highway would be twinned and kill these goddamn towns.
Let people move back to the largest nearby town ACTUALLY ON THE OPEN COAST.