Mounting problems with Regina bypass bring credence to critics

Whether we can believe all or even most of the criticism levelled at the seemingly unlevelled Regina bypass may only be determined by time.

But given the $1.9 billion Saskatchewan taxpayers are shelling out for 40 kilometres of road on the broad, flat Regina plains, there seems to be a growing list of questions and concerns in desperate need of answers.

And given the Saskatchewan Party government’s reluctance to be forthcoming at every stage of the bypass’s development, it has become increasingly hard not to take the mounting criticism seriously. The latest criticism comes from NDP highways critic Buckley Belanger and concerned Balgonie resident Jesse Edwards regarding safety and design issues over a hole in the Tower Road bridge overpass just east of Regina and what the NDP critic views as “significant erosion taking place underneath that same overpass.”

“The Regina bypass is nothing short of a $2-billion disaster,” Belanger said in the NDP’S news release. “We have overpasses that aren’t constructed to handle tractor trailers and farming equipment. We have overpasses that are literally crumbling as cars drive over them. The Sask. Party government wasted taxpayer dollars on what has now become a safety issue.”

Literally crumbling ? Well, maybe not literally. What the NDP calls a “hole” in the eastbound overpass, the highways ministry called a “dip,” according to a story by the Leader-post’s Lynn Giesbrecht.

“Once you put additional weight on top of the soil that’s underneath, you do get some consolidation of the underlying materials over time, and it becomes a maintenance issue,” said highways deputy minister Fred Antunes, adding that the dip was a water run-off issue and that Regina Bypass Design Builders (RBDB) are aware of it.

With all due respect to Belanger’s passion for his role as a critic, as someone who is also an ex-highways minister, less alarmist hyperbole is often better.

That said, it’s hard to fault Belanger for simply bringing forward concerns originating from citizens. It’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore such criticism of the bypass … which may be a bit of a turning point in this saga.

This was a project “studied to death” — or so we were told by former highways ministers like Don Mcmorris and Nancy Heppner justifying its go-ahead. This was the only solution to traffic congestion and fatalities between White City and Regina. Traffic lights or reducing speeds were, evidently, not even worthy of temporary consideration. Nor was stopping the project with just overpasses at the communities east of Regina.

Of course, this doesn’t exactly explain why a studied-to-death project would then quadruple to nearly $2 billion from the original cost estimates. Nor does it particularly justify all the nagging design and other problems like the overpasses being too narrow for large farm equipment — something one would think would have been avoided in a project “studied to death.”

Even more problematic, anytime such questions get raised — which include the issue of paying private interests to “maintain” the bypass infrastructure, which includes plowing snow in the winter — one gets the song and dance that this is a public/private partnership actually saving taxpayers money.

Again, it’s costing us $1.9 billion — at least four times the original estimate. This somehow doesn’t feel like a bargain for taxpayers. One can only wonder why this hasn’t been a bigger issue than it already is.

Perhaps it’s because the most vocal critics haven’t been taken all that seriously.

The Why Tower Road?/highway Robbery group have been — fairly or unfairly — viewed as self-interested land owners affected by expropriation, and unreasonable in their approach and accusations. (On their website, they describe themselves as a non-partisan group of volunteers from a wide variety of mostly business backgrounds without any ties to the unions or the NDP.)

But while blunt in their critique, they long ago were asking why a project that costs so much has had so many problems.

That’s something an increasing number of Saskatchewan people now seem to be asking.