NEW ROAD SHOULD BE VITAL PART OF REBUILD
There is a mountain of post-wildfire rebuilding ahead for Fort McMurray. The urge to return things to the way they were will be strong. But at least one change should be added to the books as Fort McMurray gets back to business: the issue of road access into and around this important northern city.
Fort McMurray’s geography has been part of the wildfire story since the earliest hours of the May 3 evacuation. The reality of a city designed with one road in and out — Highway 63 — meant evacuees funnelled either south through the fire or north to the shelter of oilsands facilities. Going north meant residents were safe from the immediate danger of the fire, but they were also stranded.
Now is the time for the federal, provincial and local governments to hash out a real plan to correct the oversight and answer the long-standing community call for an additional road into, or at least around, Fort McMurray.
Local councillors from the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo explained in the immediate aftermath of the evacuation that one option is a project called the East Clearwater Multi-Use Access Road, a 30-kilometre road which would require a bridge over the Clearwater River, among other crossings. Think of it as a ring road primarily aimed at keeping heavy trucks off Highway 63, which cuts through the heart of Fort McMurray.
No one should dismiss calls for a road project as a knee-jerk reaction to the wildfire.
A project like this would serve a city of nearly 90,000 and an industry that runs 24-7, 365 days a year. The estimated $1-billion price tag is the key thing that causes pause. But that should not be enough to keep it off the provincial and federal priority list. It is not currently in Alberta’s three-year construction plan.
No one should dismiss calls for a road project as a knee-jerk reaction to the wildfire.
The terrifying emergency that evacuees lived through bolsters the case for alternative access routes. But given the volume of traffic to oilsands operations and the size of the equipment that has to be hauled in and out, it is astonishing that plans for such a project have languished.
Of course the potential for earlier and bigger wildfires means that northern Alberta communities big and small need to take steps to become more fire resilient. But after seeing two northern Alberta communities forced to make fast exits from danger in a five-year span, it makes sense to take a hard look at exit routes and whether they are good enough.
Nerves alone aren’t a good enough reason to build an alternate route around and out of Fort McMurray. But it sometimes seems like it takes a disaster in this province to get action on important infrastructure issues. It wasn’t until fires in the 1990s and early 2000s closed Highway 63 — temporarily cutting off road access — that there was finally action to make Highway 881 a viable alternative to Highway 63.
Likewise, it took years of fatalities and injuries on Highway 63 to spur the twinning of a critical 250-kilometre stretch between Fort McMurray and Highway 55 to the south. The $1.2-billion twinning of Highway 63 was overdue by decades.
It is clear from the outpouring of support that Canadians care deeply about Fort McMurray and feel connected to the city. Let’s make sure that support is reflected in the basic infrastructure Fort McMurray needs now.