The province’s transportation minster says closing a section of highway leading to a dangerous Antigonish Co. intersection was required.
TIR officials decided to closed Trunk 4 between South River Rd. and Beech Hill Rd. following a December fatality, and a total of 19 collisions since Jan. 2017.
Lloyd Hines, the provincial transportation minister and the MLA for Guysborough-Eastern Shore-Tracadie, tells The Hawk they needed to take action.
“We’re not immune to the evidence in front of us- we see the situation, we knew that we had difficulty there and, unfortunately in the interim, there was a fatality,” he says. “The process that we follow for evaluating these kinds of circumstances- we have all kinds of issues like this across the province- our capacity is finite, in terms of how we can handle them.”
Hines says it’s the best they can do for now.
He says they considered other options, including temporary lights, jersey barriers and signage, but they didn’t think any of those would be sufficient.
“At the end of the day, all of those things could have helped to some extent,” he says. “The final solution, as it were, would be a roundabout for that particular section.”
Hines says they’ll reduce the number of lanes on the closed section of road, and will start work to replace the intersection with a roundabout in the fall.
He says they don’t expect construction to be done- and Trunk 4 re-opened- until spring 2021.
