Intersection closure upsets town residents
No highway access from Main Street is raising concerns about response times
Some Balgonie residents are raising concerns with the Regina Bypass design after the intersection at its Main Street and the Trans-Canada Highway was closed off.
“It’s an absolute vital part of our safety in this town,” said Jesse Edwards, volunteer member of the Balgonie Fire Department. “The way that it’s going to be designed now, there’s going to be basically more or less one point of access in and out of town,” he added in an interview Wednesday.
The construction of the Regina Bypass has meant changes for traffic patterns and intersections around the city, including the addition of overpasses along the Trans-Canada Highway east of the city.
In the town of Balgonie earlier this summer, the community celebrated the opening of a new overpass at the intersection of Highway 46 and the Trans-Canada Highway. Then last Friday, the community watched in dismay as the intersection at the Trans-Canada Highway and Balgonie’s Main Street closed.
After hearing of the plan to close the intersection last October, Edwards started a Facebook group to raise awareness and try to reverse the decision made by the Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure.
“Our town council fought very hard to keep it open, but their words were basically falling on deaf ears,” Edwards said.
Now with the intersection having closed, the community is trying again. Members of the community were invited to a meeting Wednesday night to sign a petition and to try to come up with ways to keep the intersection access open.
“We’re not asking to keep the crossing open; we’re only asking to keep the right (merging lanes) and the right of access,” Edwards said.
According to the Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure, the plan since the intersection first opened in the early 1990s was always for it to close.
“It was intended as a temporary intersection and the plan was always to close it at such time as an overpass was constructed,” said Doug Wakabayashi, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure.
About seven years ago, an intensive study was done on traffic patterns along the Trans-Canada Highway east of Regina, which is where it was decided changes needed to be made to the interchanges. The study then factored into the later decision to build the Regina Bypass, and a decision was made to close the intersection at the Trans-Canada Highway and Balgonie’s Main Street.
With the overpass at Highway 46 now open east of the intersection and the overpass further west of it at Highway 10, it’s a safety concern.
“We’ve looked at it a number of times, our engineers. We’ve also had independent engineers review it, and there’s just really no option (that) has been identified that would allow that intersection to remain open,” Wakabayashi said.
He said the ministry is currently working with the Balgonie town council on emergency access at the intersection. One option they’re considering is a gate-controlled system where there would be a gate at Main Street onto the Trans-Canada Highway and then at the median.
Edwards has heard about the ministry’s ideas, but he still worries about emergency situations.
“In an emergency situation if they did have a gate there to get out, we have to go down to the firehall, get the key, drive against traffic through town to try to get there to open up the gate. I don’t think they’ve really thought this through,” he said.
Our town council fought very hard to keep it open, but their words were basically falling on deaf ears.