One of our provinces busiest roads is Highway #39, which links the Trans-Canada highway just east of Moose Jaw, to the south eastern part of our province, including the cities of Estevan and Weyburn.  For many years, the volume of traffic on the road has lead to the discussion of possible twinning, or some sort of solution, to make the drive easier and safer for the high numbers of travelers.

The Provincial Government is now in the planning stages of adding passing lanes on Highway #39, as well as highway #6 from the junction of #39 north to Regina.

David Marit, the provincial minister of Highways and Infrastructure explained why.

"We're looking at it for a number reasons. Right now, we've obviously got traffic issues between Estevan and Regina with the number of vehicles on the highway. If we go to twinning, it really becomes cost prohibitive to some degree, when we're looking at about $2 million a kilometer for twinning. And to twin that stretch of highway, we would be looking at a multiple of years to get that done."

"But what we can do with passing lanes right now, is we can alleviate the pressure of the traffic. Obviously, safety is our number one concern here, and we can have the passing lanes literally up and running in a couple years."

"We're still seeing a significant increase in truck traffic to the US and vice versa. We did have a discussion here a few weeks ago with our counterparts from North Dakota with concerns about what we were going to do on #39 highway in conjunction with their highway and they were very happy to hear that we were looking at passing lanes."

He adds that there is the option to turn the passing lanes into a twinned highway should the need arise.