OPINION | Widening the Alaska Highway is narrow-minded

The Yukon government is pushing ahead with its plan to widen the Alaska Highway through Whitehorse, despite it being unwanted and unneeded by the community.  

In 2015, the Yukon government's Department of Highways and Public Works launched its plan for widening the Alaska Highway through Whitehorse to four travel lanes plus numerous high-speed turning lanes. After the project was widely denounced by residents and the City of Whitehorse, the new highways minister said he was cancelling the project.

Despite this, the Yukon government has continued to advance the highway expansion. The first phase of widening to four lanes (seven lanes total with turning lanes) is under construction now. Initial concepts for the next phase of four-laning the highway along the Hillcrest neighbourhood was shown to residents last month.  

At every stage of consultation, public sentiment has been largely negative and unsupportive of the project. 

One key issue is the project creates unneeded roadway capacity. Research suggests that increasing to four lanes should only occur once traffic reaches 18,000 to 20,000 vehicles per day, and not before. This is nowhere near the current volume on the Alaska Highway.

Projects in other cities around the world have shown that increasing road capacity makes traffic and congestion worse. The idea, called "induced demand," is that after supply increases, more of a good is consumed. This is clearly not something Whitehorse wants.

Widening the Alaska Highway also goes against the government's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In a study I co-authored some years ago, we determined that most of Yukon's emissions come from local motor vehicle usage.  

Most travel on the Alaska Highway through Whitehorse is local traffic: citizens travelling to and from home, school, shopping and work. As such, the Alaska Highway through Whitehorse is not a highway per say, but an urban roadway, and the territory would be better off taking an inclusive, community-focused approach. 

The Yukon government's auto-centric road design denies citizens choice.

I would like to offer the Yukon Government an alternate proposal to its highway widening project — one where we design and build for sustainable transportation first.  

1. Start with designing pathways for pedestrians and cyclists. State-of-the-art, separated cycle and pedestrian infrastructure that is accessible to people of all ages and abilities actually costs less than a new, single motor vehicle lane.  

2. After this, design for public transit — how can the roadway be optimized for buses?

3. Only after these, consider taxis, then accommodate trucks and lastly automobiles.

This plan includes a safe, separated, direct and convenient cycle and walking route along the Alaska Highway. Crossings would be physically separated by gently sloped underpasses or overpasses and protected intersections elsewhere.  

I'm not dreaming up these ideas. This approach is common in northern Europe. In the Arctic steel mill town in Sweden where I studied mining engineering in the 90s, we could ride, walk and even kick-sled throughout the city, rarely crossing a road. In the city of Oulu, Finland, well north of Whitehorse, they snowplow the bike paths before the roadways. 

The Yukon government's auto-centric road design denies citizens choice. A significant portion of Whitehorse's population does not have the privilege of driving a car due to age, health limitations or economic circumstances. Parents do not feel safe letting their children cycle to school because there are no safe, connected routes for them. Yet, over the past 70 years, essentially all public spending has been exclusively for private automobile-oriented transportation. It is time that we correct this inequity.

It's time for the Yukon government to start walking the talk.  Let's not use transportation designs of the past to solve problems we don't have today. The territory should be a leader in sustainable design instead of building antiquated auto-centric expressways. 

This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.