It’s been 17 years since Highway 59 was twinned between Winnipeg and Île-des-Chênes (IDC), and communities to the south still have no further assurance that the province intends to expand the highway anytime soon.
In the span of those two decades, Niverville’s population has exploded, virtually tripling in size. Commuter traffic between the Highway 311 turnoff and Winnipeg has undoubtedly experienced a similar upsurge.
But while traffic volume studies continue to be performed by the province along this stretch of road, the Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure (MTI) project map provides no indication that further twinning is on their radar.
A response from the media spokesperson at MTI suggests otherwise. The Highway 59 twinning project, he says, is still under consideration as part of the 2022 Multi-Year Highways Investment Strategy.
At this stage, the government hopes to perform a functional design study on the stretch of highway running from Île-des-Chênes to Highway 52 somewhere between 2025 and 2026.
Highway 59 Twinning History
After the completion of the initial $41 million twinning project in 2006, the province was quick to acknowledge the importance of initiatives like this one.
“The growing traffic volumes between Winnipeg and communities in the southeast region reflect the booming local economy,” stated a government news release of the day. “This expanded corridor will enhance capacity, promote tourism, and increase safety at the same time.”
Almost ten years later, with no further promise of a phase two operation, an action committee was formed by leaders from five different communities. They called themselves Highway 59 Partners.
In 2016, this group met with the province to plead their case to resume the twinning project. Committee spokesperson Mona Fallis, mayor of St. Pierre-Jolys at the time, believed things looked optimistic.
“The discussions have started,” Fallis told The Citizen in 2016. “We’ve never had that before. So once there’s dialogue, we can progress.”
At the same time, MTI’s executive director of construction and maintenance, Larry Halayko, told The Citizen that a functional design study for the stretch of highway from IDC to PTH 52 was scheduled to take place sometime in 2017.
Fast forward to 2019 and a study had yet to be performed.
Former Hanover Reeve Stan Toews then sent a formal letter to Ron Schuler, Minister for Transportation and Infrastructure at the time, to make a motion for the provincial government to include the cost of a functional study in their 2019 budget.
“We’re just asking that they set aside money to start the process of twinning 59 Highway,” Toews told The Citizen in 2019. “They first have to do a study before they’ll do the twinning and, at this point, they haven’t set money aside to do the study. We have to keep asking. Hopefully they’ll do that study one of these years.”
Another four years has since passed and optimism is waning. Toews has stepped down from his position as reeve and Fallis is no longer mayor of St. Pierre-Jolys. Members of the Highway 59 Partners no longer formally meet.
But thanks to Ray Maynard, the current mayor of St. Pierre-Jolys, the province hasn’t heard the last of it.
Maynard has picked up where Fallis left off.
“I always try and bring [the Highway 59 twinning] up at the annual Association of Manitoba Municipalities convention,” Maynard says. “I try to also meet with the Minister of Transportation at that time, and throughout the year I’ll send emails.”
His last meeting with provincial cabinet minister Doyle Piwniuk happened just a few months ago, accompanied by letters of support from Hanover, Niverville, and Ritchot.
According to Maynard, Piwniuk was quick to lend a listening ear, but so far no commitments are on the table.
Maynard won’t give up, though, saying that his next move is to get the letter of support promised to him by Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham. Gillingham, too, recognizes the significant impact commuters from south of Winnipeg make on the city’s economy.
Mayhard adds that when locals first started advocating for the highway’s twinning in 2009, the traffic count near Highway 311 showed approximately 6,000 vehicles per year.
“Then it was at 7,500 in 2016,” he says. “Fifteen hundred vehicle growth in that amount of time is a lot.”
According to a report from MTI, Maynard says, the annual growth since that time has averaged 210 additional vehicles every year. The last traffic volume study was performed in 2019.
Resident Sees Danger Along Two-Lane 59
For the past 17 years, Sabrina Loewen has owned a home two miles north of Highway 311 on Prefontaine Road west. At the end of every workday, she makes her commute home from Otterburne at around 5:00 p.m.
At this time each day, she has to stop on the busy Highway 59, waiting to make her lefthand turn. It’s steady traffic both ways at that time of day, she says.
At this same intersection, many southbound commuters are also stopping to make their lefthand turn onto Prefontaine east, to an area heavily populated with rural properties.
Loewen says it’s not uncommon for vehicles to be stopped in both the north- and southbound lanes. Even so, the wait time to make a turn is rarely more than a minute.
As hectic as Highway 59 is at this time of day, though, Loewen says it’s not the high volume of high-speed traffic that scares her. It’s the drivers that regularly break the law by swooping around stopped vehicles in the shoulder lane on both sides of the highway.
“I’ve been almost T-boned multiple times,” Loewen says. “My daughter just turned 16 and I’m terrified of what could happen when she’s driving.”
In recent weeks, Loewen’s worst fears were realized by some unwitting drivers after a major collision at this intersection left at least two vehicles destroyed and brought countless emergency responders to the scene.
Loewen isn’t aware of the details but has a pretty good idea of what the circumstances likely involved.
Every day, she says, four or five vehicles zip past her on the right shoulder of the highway as she waits to turn, completely ignorant of the fact that southbound vehicles may be turning east and entering their direct path as they do so.
Loewen, too, makes her lefthand turn with a huge degree of caution as vehicles similarly cut across her path when they illegally take to the shoulder. If not for the drivers of stopped vehicles making prolific use of their horns, she believes a lot more accidents would occur at this intersection.
A few years back, Loewen’s mother was injured in a similar accident when a shoulder-driver struck her vehicle while she was making a turn at an intersection a few miles north of Prefontaine.
And this scenario likely continues to occur all along the stretch of two-lane highway to IDC with the many rural homes in the area.
For Loewen, the twinning of Highway 59 south can’t come quick enough. She worries that it will take a fatality for the province to finally step up.
“Please stop passing on the shoulder,” Loewen pleads with commuters in the meantime. “You’re going to kill one of us. We want to get home from work safely just like you do.”
