School division receives response on Grassy Lake bypass concerns

By Cal Braid
Taber Times
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

During the final week of October, Southern Alberta Newspapers reported that in Grassy Lake, a local retiree and school bus driver, David Woodruff, had initiated a petition calling on the Province to build an intersection at Range Road 13-2 just west of the Viterra elevator on Highway 3. 

The ministry of transportation is building a four-lane bypass that loops south around the hamlet as part of the highway twinning project.

 As a lifelong local who is familiar with traffic patterns surrounding Grassy Lake, Woodruff has suggested a few alterations to the prescribed bypass design to improve flow, access, and safety in an area where trucks, trains, and passenger vehicles all travel regularly.

 By Dec. 3, Woodruff said he had collected 15-20 pages of signatures and spoken to a rep at the ministry of transportation. 

“I called her and she was noncommittal, but said she’d pass the information along,” he reported. “I made sure that she knew that an intersection east of Grassy Lake was the most important thing,” he continued, “and that since the lanes were already in place, it would be to everybody’s advantage to use the old number three into Grassy Lake on the east as an exit lane.”

 He also envisions using the old highway as an entrance lane two miles west of Grassy at RR 13-5, similar to one on the east side of Taber where southbound traffic on Hwy 36 crosses the railroad just before Hwy 3 and veers right to merge with it.

 Meanwhile in Taber, Marie Logan, the board chair at Horizon School Division, had contacted the minister of transportation and economic corridors, Devin Dreeshen, with concerns of her own. It came to our attention after noticing a return letter from Dreeshen which was included in Horizon’s November board meeting agenda.

 In a signed letter from Dreeshen, Logan received a better response from the ministry than Woodruff has so far. It said, “The ministry fully understands the importance of ensuring student safety and minimizing disruptions around the school. As part of the Hwy 3 twinning project between the Town of Taber and the Hamlet of Burdett, several factors were considered to ensure the safest and most effective design. The original decision to not include an east entrance to the new proposed bypass around the hamlet was based on its location, which raised significant safety concerns.”

 “To address the needs of the community, the project team provided three alternate access points to Grassy Lake along the bypass. Most recently, the M.D. of Taber council met with department staff and local residents to request further consideration for an east access. The work to review and analyze the costs and potential of introducing this east access is currently underway. Once a decision is made, it will be brought back to the municipality and area stakeholders,” Dreeshen said.

 “With the new Hwy 3 bypass to the south, only local traffic will need to use the Hwy 877 access to travel in and out of the hamlet. While this will bring some local traffic onto Hwy 877 in front of the school it is expected overall impacts on traffic volumes will be minimal and possibly reduced.”

 Dreeshen said that at the Viterra Inland Terminal, the project will add a secondary access point off of RR 13-1, in addition to the existing access at RR 13-2, which will remain available for eastbound trucks on the current highway. He said the RR 13-1 intersection offers a safer alternative with fewer turning conflicts, given that the south leg is a narrow, gravel surfaced roadway providing minimal local residential access. He believes the alternative will provide a more direct and efficient connection to Hwy 3, which should avoid the need for trucks to travel through the hamlet and past the school.

 Woodruff read Dreeshen’s letter and said it “is not clear at all. It doesn’t appear that the minister understands that the RR 13-1 crossing is not going to work because of the double tracks. (In addition), we need an access to RR 13-2 which this doesn’t say to me that we will get.”

 Woodruff’s position highlights the importance of local stakeholders in development projects.