Spate of fatal crashes near Portage la Prairie sparks calls for new overpass

It's high time the provincial and federal governments commit to building an overpass at a busy highway intersection where six people died in fatal collisions this month alone, officials with the Rural Municipality of Portage la Prairie say.

"Enough is enough, it just has to happen," Kameron Blight, reeve of the RM of Portage la Prairie, told CBC News. "It's terribly tragic and totally unacceptable."

Calls are mounting for an overpass to be constructed near the small city west of Winnipeg after two teens were killed in a crash with a semi-trailer truck on Sunday.

It happened at the intersection of the Trans-Canada Highway and Highway 16, where an RCMP spokesperson confirmed nine people have died in the past decade, including six in the past month.

Blight says the municipality has been pushing for an overpass to be constructed at the intersection for years.

In 2011, a revised construction proposal that was initially tabled in 2009 was presented to municipality officials, Blight said. The federal government and the then-NDP provincial government agreed to put up money for the build, he says, but later pulled the funding and diverted it elsewhere.

"I think times were a little difficult at that time financially as far as the 2011 flood," Blight said. "I think they were looking at funding other projects and felt the cost was just too high at the time."

'Talk doesn't save lives'

Larry Saunders, who has lived in Portage la Prairie since 1958, says he's worried about the intersection for decades.

"I'm not trying to grandstand but I think it's a government's mandate to use tax dollars to keep highways safe," Saunders said.

"There's been constant accidents at that intersection, lots of them not involving fatalities, but there's probably been millions of dollars put out in injury claims and things like that."

When asked why the underpass project was cancelled, provincial Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler said in an emailed statement to CBC he couldn't comment on how "projects were announced or prioritized under the previous government.

"The safety of Manitobans is our government's leading priority in infrastructure. Every person on our roadways deserves to travel safely and always arrive home. We will continue to monitor all roadways and intersections in the province in order to identify those that may require enhanced safety measures," the minister's statement said.

A spokesperson for Transport Canada did not comment on the interchange except to say that "federal funding for this interchange was cancelled at the province's request."

Saunders said he recently contacted the offices of of the local MLA, Ian Wishart, and Premier Brian Pallister in hopes of underscoring the need for an overpass.

He says he was moved to act after the death of the teens on the weekend.

"It really bothered me, and people losing their lives, which could've been avoided if the government had've put up an intersection," he said. "Talk doesn't save lives, it takes action."

Blight says councillors with the municipality haven't applied much pressure on the Pallister government because he wanted the year-old administration to gain its bearings first. He said that grace period has expired in light of the deaths over the weekend.

Portage la Prairie council held a meeting Tuesday morning to devise a formal overpass proposal to bring to the federal and provincial government soon.

Blight said he knows building the overpass will be an expensive proposition.

"But put a price on a life," he said. "We've had more than one life [lost] here recently and that's just unacceptable."