The Yukon Liberal government will not be proceeding with a $200-million plan for improvements to the Whitehorse corridor of the Alaska Highway.

The controversial plan, which involved the long-term four-laning of much of the artery, had been devised under the previous Yukon Party (YP) government.

“We did not feel, going through the (2016) election campaign, there was an awful lot of public support for this,” Highways and Public Works Minister Richard Mostyn told reporters after question period Monday.

“We’ve instructed the department not to proceed with it.”

There are concerns along the Alaska Highway that need to be addressed, Mostyn noted. The Liberal government is going back to the consultation phase to look at possible ways to do so, he added.

Under former premier Darrell Pasloski, the government hired consultants to produce a functional plan for an approximately 40-kilometre section of the Alaska Highway stretching from the Carcross Road to the Mayo Road turnoffs and passes through Whitehorse.

Address concerns

The plan, published early in 2015, was designed to address “current and anticipated concerns about safety and congestion,” according to a Department of Highways and Public Works website dedicated to the project.

The functional plan included widening the highway to four lanes along specific stretches, adding passing lanes, and improving access points, speed zones, and intersections.

Changes to better accommodate pedestrians and cyclists, and to improve the multi-use trail that runs alongside the corridor were also cited.

Short-, intermediate- and long-term improvements were intended to be completed over several decades, at a cost of $52 million, $50 million, and $100 million, respectively.

Several businesses feared they’d lose part of their frontage land to accommodate a much wider highway.

A public consultation period on the plan held in the spring of 2015 received more than 500 responses via survey and email.

Yukon Party MLA Scott Kent served as minister of Highways and Public Works under the previous government.

He told the Star this morning he isn’t particularly disappointed to hear the Liberal government has dropped the plan he helped engineer.

“Certainly, this is their prerogative, and it’s not entirely different from what we announced a couple of years ago,” he said.

Mostyn appears to be keeping as priorities many of the safety concerns the YP functional plan highlighted, Kent added.

Indeed, Mostyn told reporters that locations at Robert Service Way and the South and North Klondike Highways have been flagged as requiring timely attention to address safety hazards.

“There’s work that needs to be done in this corridor,” he said.

“We are going to look at fixing those intersections with an eye to safety, and to benefit the users of the highway in those areas.”

$5 million for improvements

The government has allocated $5 million for improvements to the South Klondike Highway intersection this year, and a similar amount for the North Klondike intersection next year.

“What’s happened is, the corridor has grown up without a lot of oversight, so you have people coming on to the highway in areas that are dangers,” Mostyn explained.

Other areas of concern include locations in Hillcrest and Valleyview, at Two Mile Hill and at the Mayo Road where a major tanker rollover occurred June 22.

Shaunagh Stikeman, the president of the Hillcrest Community Association, said in an interview this morning that the Liberals’ decision to abandon the previous government’s plan for the corridor is news the association welcomes.

Stikeman was a vocal opponent of the plan as the NDP candidate for Mountainview in the 2016 election. The riding includes the Hillcrest, Valleyview, Granger, and McIntyre neighbourhoods.

“We don’t want a mega-highway. We want a safe highway,” Stikeman said of the corridor plan to widen the highway to four lanes where it passes by these communities.

“The plan proposed more lanes, which would encourage faster speed and more vehicles on the highway. And what we’re asking for is fewer lanes, reducing speed, and increasing the number of safe highway crossings,” she said.

However, the association is heartened by the government’s willingness to identify problem areas along the highway.

It’s looking forward to participating in future consultations about highway imporvements, Stikeman said, which Mostyn also promised will occur.

“We feel, as a government, that we’re going to have to talk to users of the highway to see what they want. We want to build through consultation and discussion,” he said.

Making changes to the highway is particularly challenging in populated areas, he explained, and requires more extensive consultation with citizens, communities, and industry compared to work on more isolated sections of road.

He cited soon-to-be completed construction at the intersection of the South Klondike and Alaska highways near the Carcross Cutoff as one example of more easily expedited, remote roadwork.

That construction project also came up in the legislative assembly Monday.

NDP Leader Liz Hanson told the house that a lack of lighting and signage at the intersection is leading to dangerous driving situations.

Nearby residents and businesses were told that lighting would be up two weeks ago – and signage far before that, she said.

Mostyn responded to the questions by emphasizing that safety is the government’s motivation behind this construction, and that the work should be finished “very soon.”

“When that work is completed, the proper signage and lighting will be up,” he said.