Alberta Party leader Stephen Mandel chats with local candidates Danielle Klooster (left) Paul Hardy (back), and Ryan McDougall in Red Deer on Mar. 28.

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

A new way to travel?

Alberta Party proposes wider highway for driverless vehicles

Mar 28, 2019 | 8:26 PM

Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel announced in Red Deer on Thursday that if elected, his government would add a third lane to the QEII highway from Calgary to Edmonton.

Mandel said he would eventually like to see the third lane – both northbound and southbound – be used as a corridor for autonomous vehicles.

“Self-driving vehicles are already in use and more are on the way. We can either get ready for this, or get left behind. An Alberta Party government will get us ready by building new lanes on the QEII, and positioning Alberta as a world leader in self-driving vehicles for colder climates—cars, trucks, and even farm equipment,” he said.

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“This will make us more competitive and be an entirely new source of jobs and growth—fueled by the incredible minds and assets we have in artificial intelligence.”

The party says that Alberta provides ideal testing grounds for autonomous vehicles and that there are already companies within the province testing autonomous vehicles in several industries.

It’s also outlined that the economic impact of fully adopting autonomous vehicles in Alberta would be around $10 million, including $6 million from collision avoidance, $3 billion in time saved, and $500 million in fuel savings, which would have a positive impact for over 100,000 jobs in the province.

Currently traffic on the QEII is at capacity, seeing 170,000 vehicles per day in total, with 60,000 to 70,000 vehicles per day between Calgary and Red Deer, the party says.

“Red Deer is, in my opinion, the epicentre of Highway 2, it is the connectivity between Edmonton and Calgary, and everyone knows Red Deer is the place you stop, it’s the place where Highway 2 really has life in it,” Mandel added.

“Traffic is becoming so much increased, car traffic is up thousands of vehicles, truck traffic is up, and it’s not very safe.”

The proposal would purportedly support over 300 direct service jobs and enable over 20,000 businesses relying on the highway to expand their workforces.

The additional lane would span a length of 261 kilometres, with an estimated cost of $1.6 billion. It would also create roughly 5,000 construction jobs and 3,500 indirect jobs per year of construction.

The Alberta Party also states in a release that if elected, they would increase the provincial highway rehabilitation budget by 40 per cent from $360 million a year to $504 million a year, and invest an additional $50 million to improve roads throughout the province.