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No more money for Connector

A QUIET decision by the provincial transportation ministry last year not to put any money into maintaining a high profile road north of here could very well be repeated this year.

A QUIET decision by the provincial transportation ministry last year not to put any money into maintaining a high profile road north of here could very well be repeated this year.

Since 2004, the ministry had been spending $50,000 a year on basic maintenance of the Cranberry Connector, the approximately 55km stretch of east-west gravel road that connects the Nass Valley to Hwy37 North north of Kitwanga.

Once a busy logging road, the Connector fell into disrepair in the late 1990s with the collapse of the regional forest industry.

It then became the focus of lobbying efforts by regional governments who said an improved Connector would boost tourism traffic. The Connector took on a different kind of role in 2007 when it was pressed into service as the only east-west route when a spring mudslide blocked Hwy16 east of Terrace followed by more road closures when late spring flooding covered the highway.

In a partial response to calls for improvements in 2007, current Liberal leadership candidate Kevin Falcon, then the transportation minister, put $200,000 into the Connector as one-time expenditure. But the transportation ministry put an end to any expenditures last year, citing budget restraints.

“We don’t have the resources to put into it at this time,” said local transportation ministry official Don Ramsay last week.

The ministry had been forwarding the money to the forest service, which had jurisdiction over the road.

“It’s not our road, we’re just being good citizens,” said Ramsay.

David Currie, public affairs officer for the Ministry of Natural Resource Operations, which has since replaced the forest service when it comes to responsibility for the Connector, was unable to say what kind of money would be spent on maintenance for the road this year. Maintenance on the road included grading, culvert repair, culvert cleaning, ditching and dangerous tree removal.

Ramsay said there has been a long standing need expressed by various interest groups for the road to be transferred to his ministry and then to have it improved. He said a transfer isn’t likely to happen.

When asked about the possibility of improving the Cranberry Connector during a leadership campaign visit to Terrace in January, Falcon said many areas of the province have only single-road access.

“The Cranberry Connector was always an idea that was brought to me as the minister of transportation, but it’s a very difficult business case,” he said, saying that a lot of money is needed for these upgrades.

“The main argument is ‘in case we have a problem on (Hwy) 16 so that we’ve got a back route,’” he said. “Well, there’s lots of parts of the province that we don’t spend huge amounts of money so that we’ve got an alternative route in case something happens.” Falcon also said a traffic study showed the road wasn’t used a lot. In winter, however, it was not maintained at all nor was it plowed.

Falcon also based his argument on a cost estimate of more than $30 million to convert the Cranberry Connector from a logging road into a fully-fledged paved two-lane highway. While the leadership candidate did acknowledge local opinion that use of the Connector would increase based on an anticipated approval of the Northwest Transmission Line and resulting industrial activity, he said spending money on the Connector would not be a good choice.