Infrastructure maintenance in the Burns Lake area might be given a lower priority down the line amid the construction of the Pattullo Bridge in Vancouver.
That $1.37 billion project to connect Surrey and New Westminster will begin construction this year and will open in 2023.
READ MORE: VIDEO: New Pattullo Bridge expected to open in 2023
But John Rustad, MLA for Nechako Lakes, is concerned that the costs for the new bridge could eventually be taken out of the budgets for road and infrastructure upkeep in the region.
“We saw this story in the 1990s when they did the [Vancouver] Island Highway,” he said at a Chamber of Commerce lunch event in Burns Lake on March 21.
“They had huge cost overruns. I think…the entire roads budget from the Alberta border to Burns Lake was only $1 million, because they had to strip all the money away from the projects of stuff like this to meet what they were doing down south. I’m very concerned that the same thing will happen with the Pattullo Bridge.”
The 2019-2020 provincial budget for road, bridge and electrical maintenance and pavement marking is $475 million, according to Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure spokesman Brendan Phelps.
That marks a rise compared to the 2018-2019 budget which was $462 million.
In 2016, when the Liberal government was in power, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure budget was $858 million, and $920 million was actually spent, according to the 2017 British Columbia Financial and Economic Review document.
Across the region of Rustad’s Nechako Lakes riding - which stretches from Vanderhoof to Houston - Lakes District Maintenance (LDM) and Yellowhead Road & Bridge provide road maintenance service.
About $13.9 million is budgeted for their service contracts - $6.1 million for LDM and $7.8 for Yellowhead, whose contract expires at the end of April and will soon be open for bids.
A different group of contractors are in charge of preservation programs which handle highway resurfacing, bridge rehabilitation and replacement and other safety projects.
The budgets for those contractors would be known at the end of April.
Phelps said that “no money from highways maintenance is being taken away and moved to the Pattullo Bridge.”
However, Rustad worries that the situation might turn out differently.
“Our budget for highways in the Nechako Lakes riding over the last 10 years has averaged between $14-17 million. My suspicion is that, if you look at the Ministry of Transportation’s budget they’ve got a $1.4 billion dollar bridge that they’re going to need to build - Pattullo Bridge. And there isn’t a significant uplift in the budget. So that money’s got to come from somewhere.”
Blair McBride
Multimedia reporter
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