Manitoba Highways

[thewave46]

Sadly, the optics of squeezing the feds for money fade as memory of the tragedy fades. One doesn't do it right away in such a tragedy, but shortly thereafter - throw out a 75% fed/25% province split offer for an interchange to the federal Minister of Transport. Especially when the feds are fairly spendthrift and need the PR boost.

It makes the $550m the province spends on infrastructure and transportation go that much further.

Manitoba should squeeze the feds for infrastructure money on Highway 1/100/101. Doubly so when other provinces are getting their nose in the trough for federal money. It's a smaller province, so it needs less 'grandiose transit schemes' or 'big manufacturing subsidy', but does need improvements to its highway network.

Aside: As for $800m twinning of Ontario Highway 17 - maybe if they did $800m per year for a 50 year plan. Given the pace and cost of the Highway 69 four-laning from Sudbury, ON to Parry Sound, ON ($2b estimate, started in 2005 - 19 years later there's still 70km of 157km left to go), the cost and difficulty of twinning the whole route is the big obstacle.

Northern Ontario needs better engineered / more forgiving roads (passing lanes, 2+1, removing rock cuts, better geometry) per mile. Four lanes are such overkill for much of it.