Carberry council endorses overpass at deadly junction

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This article was published 13/09/2024 (466 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — The Town of Carberry has formally endorsed a grade-separated interchange — or overpass — to dramatically boost the safety of the infamous Highway 5 and Trans-Canada Highway intersection.

Carberry Mayor Ray Muirhead said a majority of councillors voted for the interchange option at a council meeting last month.

“I think if (the provincial government) came back after the whole process was completed and say, ‘Yes, we’ve decided to go with an overpass,’ I think that would be a relief,” the mayor said. “I know, we as a town would really push (for) that. We’d make sure that it wouldn’t stall out.”

In June 2023, 17 Dauphin-area seniors were killed when their minibus collided with a semi-trailer at the intersection. They were headed south on Highway 5 while the semi was driving east on the Trans-Canada.

The interchange was not one of the three “medium-term” intersection improvement options presented by the province. In January, it announced it would spend $12 million to improve the intersection. An interchange is a “long-term” option, the province said.

Since then, the province has sought feedback from community members and hosted an open house in July in which residents were invited to share their preferred option.

“The general consensus in the community was lights — a lot of them say lights, but most of them say overpass,” Muirhead said.

Residents, truckers, first responders and local officials who attended the open house spoke to the Brandon Sun about the history of collisions at the intersection. Twenty-nine collisions were recorded from 2012 to 2021.

The three medium-term options presented in January included a roundabout, widening the median at the intersection, and a new “RCUT” intersection design that is widely used in the U.S. in which drivers turn onto a main road and make a U-turn at a one-way median.

Traffic signals and lowered speed limits were options that were considered by the report authors, but they said evidence suggested those measures would not be effective at the intersection.

An interchange was presented as a long-term option, as it would require significant planning and analysis due to cost and potential impacts on surrounding communities. At the January press conference, the province said that an interchange or overpass would come with a price tag of about $100 million and a 20-year-plus timeline.

At the time, Premier Wab Kinew said while the report showed that the safest option is the roundabout, the RCUT intersection is comparable to an interchange in terms of safety.

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Muirhead said a roundabout or an RCUT design would be more complicated for drivers.

“The easier, the better,” he said, adding that an overpass would keep traffic moving on Highway 5.

In an email to the Sun, the province said the functional design stage is underway and the government will share the options and evaluation findings for public feedback this fall.

Construction on the project is expected to be completed by the fall of 2026, the statement said.

— Brandon Sun