Hurry Up and Twin Hiway 63!
Home Pros Group started in Fort McMurray but has expanded to Edmonton in the past year and that means that we have to travel Hiway 63 virtually every week, my wife worries everytime I start my drive to or from Edmonton. Home Pros Group also employs people that have to travel this dangerous stretch of highway everyweek and we fear for their safety as well.
In the past five years, 46 people have died on Highway 63, which run from north of Edmonton to Fort McMurray and continues up past the sites of massive oil-sands mines. The late April accident has crystallized a movement in northern Alberta to have the highway’s lengthy two-lane stretches twinned, and some have called on industry to help.
But companies operating north of Fort McMurray have already begun sketching a plan to use industry dollars to upgrade the road. The section of Highway 63 north of Fort McMurray connects workers with many of the largest oil-sands sites. It often has major traffic jams, and has produced serious accidents. It carries roughly four times as many vehicles a day as the road south of Fort McMurray.
But only the first 17 kilometres have been twinned, and the remainder is a lesser priority for a government focused on the southern route, where some sections have seen a near tripling in daily vehicle numbers in the past decade.
The Oil Sands Developers Group has begun to put pressure on the Provincial and Federal Governments to complete the twining of Hiway 63 and Home Pros Group fully supports their efforts.
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