Highway 18 to be upgraded next year
Change to A1 Unrestricted rating would reduce municipal road damage: mayor
BY KIM LANGEN
It may not be exactly what the mayor ordered, but it will mark a big improvement when it comes to battered roads and hammered taxpayer dollars.
Rick Pauls, mayor for the Municipality of Killarney-Turtle Mountain, said he heard from the offices of Manitoba Infrastructure on Wednesday that plans are afoot to finally improve conditions on the well-travelled Highway 18, going north from town.
“I have been contacted by the department, and they have told me that next year they are going to grind the highway right down to the base,” said Pauls. “And then they are repairing it. It will become an A1 Unrestricted road.”
Pauls said he had been told that the tenders were going out soon for the much-anticipated highway work.
“It’s going for tender, and tenders close in March of 2019, for work to be done in that year,” he said.
The repaving project would include Hwy. 18 starting at the north limit of town, near the Manitoba Hydro office and the HyLife Feed Mill, and extend to the northern junction of Hwy. 23.
Manitoba Infrastructure, in its Fall 2018 Advertising Schedule for Construction and Material Supply Tenders, describes the work slated for Hwy. 18 as ‘Bituminous Rehabilitation.’
The municipality has been lobbying hard for years for an RTAC-rated highway improvement project, but this was still good news, said Pauls, because it will help keep the heavy trucks and trailers off the municipal roads when spring weight restrictions come into force each year.
“We wanted the restrictions off,” he said. “This is big news. It will save us huge tax dollars when it comes to maintaining our municipal gravel roads. It won’t have the RTAC rating, which just means it will be a little narrower.”
FROM HYLIFE TO HIGHWAY 23 – Highway 18, from HyLife (right) and Hydro (left), will be ground down to the gravel base and repaved all the way up to the Highway 23 junction, says Manitoba Infrastructure. The stretch of highway will be changed to A1 Unrestricted when finished.