‘IT’S A DEATH TRAP’
Push for paving continues
For Kirsten MacNeil, the push to have a completely paved secondary highway running between Edmonton and Stony Plain is a deeply personal quest.
Her 21-year-old son Luke MacNeil was killed when the vehicle he was driving skidded off Highway 628 just before Century Road, rolled and crashed into a tree last year.
It was 6:30 p.m. on July 6 and the third-year plumbing apprentice was on his way to his parents’ rural property from his apartment on Whyte Avenue.
It was three weeks before his 22nd birthday.
It was a day that Kirsten MacNeil will never forget. “That was my baby,” she said. “I don’t want any other parent — or any other family — to go through this.
“This is hell.”
Since the accident, residents have been pushing even harder to have something done with the road which they say desperately needs to be paved to prevent another person from losing their life.
But they feel their voices are not being heard.
“It’s atrocious,” MacNeil said. “There is no visibility. It’s ridiculous.”
Residents south of Spruce Grove concerned with the route say that soft shoulders, washboard ruts, speeding drivers and dangerous plumes of dust make driving the road hellish and dangerous.
In her emails to politicians, MacNeil has said that if more people die on that stretch of road because of their refusal to do anything to improve conditions, “that blood will be on their hands.”
“We are desperate for help,” she said.
“They keep sending graders out, but that doesn’t matter. It needs to be paved.”
The road conditions between Highway 779 and Golden Spike Road are improved and will continue to do so with government committing to complete six kilometres of repaving in this year’s construction program.
But that is to the east of the problem area, the residents say.
The provincial government is aware of the issue, and has added a plan to its unfunded capital projects to “grade, base, pave” Highway 628 east of Highway 779 all the way to Edmonton’s western edge. But the government has said the money is currently not available.
Alberta Transportation spokesman Graeme McElheran said the ministry considers a number of factors when developing its construction program for any given year including “safety, economic, social and environmental benefits and aligning those factors to meet government priorities, such as connecting communities.”
“There are a lot of demands for infrastructure improvements on Alberta’s highway network, and government has to consider the needs of the entire province,” he said.
“Tax dollars are limited and spending decisions must be made wisely, considering the needs of all Albertans.”
What concerns residents like Christina Mowbray is that a dozen school-aged kids who catch a bus at one of seven stops along a short stretch of unpaved road could become the next victims.
An online petition launched last year by Mowbray in a bid to convince the government it needs to act continues to get signatures, but it’s not enough.
“This can never be allowed to happen again,” she said.
Michele Kleijnen, who has lived her entire life on a property on Highway 628, said the dust was so bad that someone came over the hill last week, lost control of their pickup and almost hit the school bus. It was so dusty that when the bus company tried to identify the licence plate of the out-of-control pickup from the camera mounted on the side of the bus, it was obscured by dust, she said.