MAPLE CREEK, Sask. — The Southwest Transportation Planning Council (SWTPC) has held a series of workshops to help determine future priorities of the transportation industry.

Part of the process included teaming up with Stantec Consulting from Saskatoon, who are helping the SWTPC to determine some pressing concerns in the industry.

“People are not excited about creating alternate heavy haul routes,” Stantec’s Ed Fredeen told local media following the workshops. He notes that Sakstachewan’s highways were not built to endure the level of heavy-truck traffic that it now has to accommodate.

Fredeen says that one thing became abundantly clear through the meetings, and that is that links have to be constructed to get the heavy traffic to new alternate routes, which will cost between $250,000 and $500,000 per kilometre to upgrade.