Site of deadly Manitoba bus crash was studied in 2006, but suggested improvement wasn't completed
Province to announce recommendation for upgrade this week, 2 years after crash that killed 17 near Carberry
With safety upgrade recommendations for the site of Manitoba's deadliest crash set to be announced this week, CBC has learned the province studied the intersection nearly 20 years ago and chose not to fix a significant highlighted issue because of the cost.
The June 15, 2023, crash left 17 people dead, after a semi and a bus full of seniors from the Dauphin area collided at the intersection of the Trans-Canada Highway and Highway 5, near Carberry.
The tragedy spurred calls for the intersection to be overhauled, with residents in the area saying they had been warning of its dangers for years. The government ordered a full review of the intersection, with the aim of identifying longer-term safety improvements, and is set to announce its recommendations this week.
But a 2006 study of the intersection said the median is too narrow and doesn't meet national standards — a cause of concern that still hasn't been addressed.
"It's really heartbreaking that they've known this long and basically waited until there was a tragic accident two years ago to actually step up and do anything," said Jordan Dickson, whose home is just down the road from where the collision took place.
CBC obtained the two-page 2006 document, which is a summary of the assessment of the intersection, through freedom of information laws. The assessment came after Carberry town council asked the province to examine the intersection, according to the report.
The summary says there were 11 accidents at the intersection over a five-year period. An engineer with the provincial government's traffic engineering branch wrote in the report that rate was "below the level of concern" to meet the criteria for a traffic signal.
The report didn't identify any single specific factor that contributed to the reported collisions, but there were "a number of items that may have contributed to an imperfect driving environment, thus leading to some of the events of concern," the engineer wrote.
One of those concerns was the existing median width, which "doesn't meet today's design standards," the engineer wrote in the report, dated June 22, 2006.
The report said the traffic engineering branch would address some identified issues — such as cutting tall grass that obstructed drivers' views, along with adding median stop bars and a divided-highway warning sign.
But widening the median wasn't on the table, due "to the costs of localized improvements of this nature," the report said.
Province will recommend 1 of 3 options
Nearly 20 years later, widening the median is one of the three options presented in a provincial report released in January 2024. The province has earmarked $12 million to upgrade the intersection.
Adding a roundabout was also presented as an option, as was a restricted crossing U-turn, or RCUT.
That option would eliminate direct left turns from the Trans-Canada and going directly north-south on Highway 5. Instead, drivers would make merges and U-turns to get where they're going.
WATCH | How an RCUT intersection would work:
On Wednesday, government officials will announce their recommendation to the community at an open house in Carberry, just a few kilometres south of the intersection. A government spokesperson said it will not be the final decision.
All three options have been met with protest by members of the community and local government, who argue the only real solution is an overpass. The government has previously said an overpass is not an option due to the current traffic volumes.
Area resident Dickson is part of a group of concerned community members who recently organized a protest against the proposals. She worries the RCUT will be the recommended option and says it would be detrimental to the local agriculture industries in the area. She'd prefer to see an overpass built.
The southwestern Manitoba area is home to many potato farmers, she said, which means during harvest, hundreds of semi-trucks cross the intersection daily to get to the McCain potato processing plant in Carberry.
"For them to ask all these loaded potato … [trucks] to merge onto a very busy No. 1 [Trans-Canada] highway, possibly twice depending on if they're going east or west … they're not going to be able to get up to speed," she said.
"It's just going to be more accidents on the No. 1."
The mayor of Carberry says his council will voice its opposition to the RCUT at a stakeholder meeting planned Monday evening with government officials.
"The long and the short of it is they don't live in this community, and they don't understand the traffic volumes, the impact that it'll have on agriculture," said Mayor Ray Muirhead, who echoed calls for the province to reconsider an overpass.
'Safety deficiencies' long known: prof
Stuart Olmstead, Carberry's former mayor, first became a councillor in 2006. The safety of the intersection was something the town talked to the province about "year over year," he said.
"Everybody in town has a story about the intersection. Some of them are quite tragic, some of them are scary," he said.
Olmstead said the median is narrow because the intersection was designed decades ago with the idea of an overpass being built in the future.
By today's standards, an intersection like the one at Highway 5 and the Trans-Canada would be built with a median wide enough to fit a truck and have a stop sign, said Ahmed Shalaby, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Manitoba.
That gives a driver a safer way to cross the intersection, allowing them to safely stop at the median after crossing the first lanes of traffic.
But narrower medians can be found all along the Trans-Canada Highway, he said.
Fixing each one at a localized level would be tough, because "there is never a budget to do all the improvements that we desire," he said.
"The safety deficiencies at this intersection have been known for a long period of time, but there hasn't been really an attempt to correct these."
Shalaby says RCUTs can be an effective option, but he has concerns about one at the Carberry-area location.
Vehicles from across the country drive on the Trans-Canada and drivers might be confused, he said. Currently, the only RCUT in Canada is on Highway 16 in Saskatchewan, but they are found throughout the United States.
But Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Lisa Naylor argued if the RCUT is chosen, people will get used to it.
Naylor said officials gave her their recommendation on the intersection last month, but she wouldn't disclose their decision.
As for the 2006 report saying the median was too narrow, Naylor said she "can't speak for a government 20 years ago."
"There's lots of moving parts in government. Certainly we all wish that what happened in 2023 — that fatal collision that took the lives of 17 seniors — had never happened."
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