Grieving mom calls for paving upgrades on highway

Son was killed in crash on July 6

Kirsten MacNeil still goes out to the side of Highway 628 and tries to sleep at the spot where her son, Luke MacNeil, died in a car crash on July 6.

Luke MacNeil is not the only one who has died on the gravel road between Edmonton and Stony Plain, and a growing number of families are calling for improvements.

Wendy Wagner, Luke’s aunt and Kirsten’s sister, was 6,000 kilometres away when she heard the news and returned to deal with cremation, funeral arrangements and choosing songs for a slide show to remember his life.

Luke MacNeil was driving westbound in his mother’s SUV when the vehicle skidded off the road just before Century Road around 6:30 p.m. July 6.

Wagner said the road has no shoulder, the edges are sloped and gravely and the ditches are deep with no guardrails. The vehicle rolled into the ditch, hitting a large tree, killing MacNeil on impact.

A makeshift cross atop an embankment was surrounded by a football, a flashlight and flowers.

Alberta Transportation is aware of complaints along Highway 628, said Graeme McElheran, in a written statement from Alberta Transportation on Friday.

“We are working on improvements in the area, including repaving between Golden Spike Road and Highway 779. We expect work on that project to begin in 2018,” McElheran said.

But the section between Edmonton and Golden Spike Road “needs some work,” McElheran said.

The issue on Highway 628 is about safe infrastructure, McElheran said.

“Small segments of this section of Highway 628 have been treated in the past with a mixture of gravel and asphalt, but it became too difficult to maintain so gravel was applied to match the entire section of road,” he said.

“We are in the process of hiring a consultant for future design work and to identify the need for utility relocation and land acquisition. Completing that consulting work will allow the project to proceed directly to the construction phase as funding becomes available and is allocated.”

The government does not have a timeline for construction on Highway 628 from Edmonton to Golden Spike Road.

Wagner said the neighbour who found MacNeil said hundreds of collisions have occurred on that stretch of highway. One nearby resident told her she was personally aware of four deaths.

“My family are asking the County of Parkland to incur this one, relatively minor expense. Pave the road. Is that really too much to prevent another family, and friends, from going through the incredible pain we are experiencing?”