BALGONIE OVERPASS
Access changes frustrate firefighter
A Balgonie firefighter brought his concerns over the Regina bypass project — and one of its new overpasses in particular — to the legislative assembly Thursday.
Jesse Edwards is a first responder from the bedroom community east of Regina and he wants the provincial government to allow right turns on and off the TransCanada Highway at Balgonie’s central access as has been the case for years.
Instead, the province is making the newly built overpass the only way to access the Trans-Canada from Balgonie and has closed the right-in, right-out access.
“It’s absolutely killing businesses right now,” said Edwards. “We have several businesses in town that have laid off staff; they’ve cut back their hours, all because of this access closure.”
Highways Minister Dave Marit said he “knows the importance of access” as a small-town Saskatchewan resident himself. “But let’s make it very clear: This is really about safety. This is about safety and making sure no more lives are lost at that intersection.”
Edwards charged that no fatalities at the intersection have been a result of people turning right in or out of town.
Marit said the businesses affected will still be on a paved road, and wouldn’t exist if a right-in, rightout option was pursued.
“We would have needed all that property where the businesses are to make the smooth right-in, rightout, so the businesses would have been gone in the event we put it in,” he said.
Edwards also raised concerns over emergency response times. He said using the overpass — not even accounting for traffic — wastes valuable time of firefighters and EMS attending to emergencies. He is also concerned there would be only one exit if the town needed to be evacuated.
In response, the province is putting in place a gate that can be controlled by emergency services and opened when needed by first responders.
“We’ve addressed their concern on emergency response,” said Marit, who had no concerns with the reliability of the gate.
Edwards doesn’t trust that idea and said “their take on safety may be a little bit under my standards” because the province once proposed emergency vehicles driving east in westbound lanes in order to solve the issue of first responders’ ability to enter and exit the community.
Doug Wakabayashi, a highways ministry spokesman, said one of the “potential solutions” proposed by the province was to have emergency vehicles exit Balgonie on Main Street and “head east a little bit down the westbound lanes” and then use an existing crossover to enter the eastbound lanes.
“That obviously would involve some sort of traffic control on the eastbound lanes, to prevent conflict with eastbound traffic and emergency vehicles,” he sad. “Obviously the town and the fire department wasn’t very receptive to that idea.”