Highway 3 Twinning Development Assoc. eager to keep advancing forward

By Tim Kalinowski on October 14, 2021.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDtkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com

The Highway 3 Twinning Development Association is wanting to keep its recent momentum going and continue its lobbying efforts toward making small advances each year on the twinning as a whole. The organization is hoping the province will make a yearly funding commitment of some amount toward getting the work done a bit at a time.
“If we look at it in a piece by piece section by section, let’s get it twinned, a continuous stream of funding is needed to twin over the next 10-25 years,” stated Victoria Chester, the Association’s Director of Advancement, at a town hall on Wednesday. 
Chester said the biggest challenge facing the entire enterprise is the $1.2 billion dollar price tag in an era of fiscal downturn for the province.
“The cost continues to go up,” she stated. “Years ago, back in the 1970s or 1980s or maybe even early 1990s, the government was purchasing some of the land as it became available along the corridor to prepare for twinning. More recently they have seen it as a fixed asset that sits there and doesn’t earn the government any money. And these recent recommendations have been selling off some of that land was preferable to maintain the coffers of Alberta right now in our (economic) situation.
“As we go forward the twinning can only get more expensive, and given the fact we are in an economic state it does make it a challenge to try to figure out how we can plan twinning right now,” she said.

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