Deputy premier Doug Horner said this week the province is moving as fast as it can, given the challenges of building a safe highway on muskeg, environmental concerns, and the need to keep the highway open for business.

“We are going as fast as we can…. We’ve got about 110 kilometres of the 255 kilometres already cleared, we’ve got 36 kilometres ready to go this year,” Horner said Monday, adding the technical design for the highway is complete.

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“Is pouring more money at it going to make it faster? I’m not sure that’s the case.”

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The fiery crash Friday killed a Fort McMurray, Alta., pastor, his wife and one of their two young sons. Travelling with them was a man and his pregnant wife. She died in the crash. He remains in hospital.

Forty-six people have died on Highway 63 since 2006.

Roughly 19 kilometres south of Fort McMurray has been twinned already, while the province hopes to have another 36-kilometre section north of Wandering River paved by fall 2013.

That leaves 185 kilometres to be twinned, a project expected to cost at least $1 billion.

By Monday, nearly 11,000 people had signed an online petition at change.org, urging the government to twin the highway after Friday’s collision.

Official Opposition leader Danielle Smith said that if the province continues at its current rate, the highway won’t be twinned for seven years. She questioned the government’s motivation and priorities.

“I would hope that they’re not making decisions on key infrastructure for political reasons, but I think we’ve heard from the AUMA (Alberta Urban Municipalities Association), we’ve seen from school boards, we’ve seen with hospitals that often times these decisions do get made politically,” Smith said Monday, referring to a string of high-profile political events that suggest the Conservatives favour their political friends when doling out infrastructure money.

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The highway is often referred to as the deadliest in the province, but Alberta Transportation spokeswoman Heather Kaszuba said Monday the collision rate is lower than average.

She said the five-year collision rate on Highway 63 is 82 collisions per 100 million vehicle kilometres. The average for similar two lane highways in the province is significantly higher at 107 collisions per 100 million vehicle kilometres.

The province does not keep statistics on the fatality rate for collisions on two-lane highways, Kaszuba said.

Edmonton Journal
With files from Jen Gerson, National Post