Liberals aim to twin Route 11 from Shediac to Miramichi

New Brunswick's Liberal government is reiterating its goal of twinning all of Route 11 from Shediac to Miramichi, even as questions persist about whether traffic on the road meets the threshold for such costly improvements.

"Eventually, our hope is to have that highway twinned from Shediac to Miramichi," Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Bill Fraser told reporters Tuesday.

In January, the provincial and federal governments announced more than a quarter-billion dollars in funding for two upgrades to the highway.

Work is already underway to twin 20 kilometres from Shediac River to south of Bouctouche, an area that includes part of Premier Brian Gallant's provincial riding and federal Liberal cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc's constituency.

And Fraser said the province is buying land for an 11-kilometre, two-lane bypass leading into Miramichi, part of his riding.

The two projects together are budgeted to cost $272 million. The high cost is due in part to 14 bridges, underpasses and overpasses that will be needed as part of the work.

The full length of Route 11 between Shediac and Miramichi is 120 kilometres.

In 2009, the Liberal government of Shawn Graham announced it was planning to twin Route 11 between Moncton and Miramichi. The estimated cost at the time was $943 million.

At January's announcement, Gallant and LeBlanc gave Fraser"a very clear indication we want to do more," he said.

"I have no commitment for funding for further twinning yet, but I've directed my staff and we've dedicated a resource to continue the planning for the continued twinning from the southern part up to Miramichi."

Low traffic counts

Documents obtained by CBC News in 2015 showed traffic counts in the central section of that stretch where no twinning is confirmed so far were below the threshold required for the province to consider twinning.

The threshold was 8,000 vehicles per day, and counts near Bouctouche had risen from 6,600 in 2009 to 7,130 in 2012.

A January 2012 report said the collision rate on Route 11 was "fairly low" compared to other two-lane arterial roads, and another report later that year concluded accidents were "not a significant issue in this area."

Yet another report said collision rates on the highway did not "stand out as a significant concern relative to the rest of the province."

On Tuesday, Fraser tried to count collisions in a different way, citing a figure of 813 in the central section of road from 1999 to 2012. He said the numbers were "staggering" and didn't respond directly on whether traffic counts met the twinning threshold.

No new numbers

"There's a number of factors that go into what warrants twinning and what numbers don't. It's not just the number of fatalities," he said.

"It's the number of vehicles per day and all that's taken into consideration. So as we move forward that's continuously evaluated because that changes, right? Numbers could increase. Numbers could decrease."

But Fraser's department didn't provide any new numbers to compare to the figures in the documents released in 2015.

• Route 11 twinning remains a possibility despite low traffic
• Feds, province ante up $272M for Route 11 upgrades
• N.B.'s $942M plan aims to twin Route 11 from Moncton to Miramichi

The news release last month announcing the $272 million in upgrades said "certain areas" of Route 11 that aren't twinned have daily traffic counts that are "projected to increase to as high as 10,000 vehicles per day."

But it did not provide any current traffic counts.

PCs point to data

Opposition Progressive Conservative MLA Jeff Carr said Tuesday that a PC government "would definitely go on data, hard-fact data, on where the incidents of accidents are, not on projections" in deciding what to twin.

While previous PC governments had promised to twin part of Route 11 in the Shediac-Bouctouche area, "I don't think they need to twin the whole length," Carr said.

"They need to look at the data, not projections."