The province said it anticipates moving ahead with work to widen the Trans-Canada Highway between Leigh Road and West Shore Parkway and add barriers, but did not give a timeframe.
The comments came two days after a fatal crash in the area, and one day after Langford Mayor Stew Young called for immediate improvements to a stretch of highway that has seen two fatal crashes so far this year.
A 24-year-old man was killed in a head-on crash on Sunday, less than a month after another driver died in the same area on Jan. 8. Passengers were also seriously injured in both crashes.
A statement from Danielle Pope, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, said the ministry is working with police to understand the factors that led to the crashes.
“Once we have this information, ministry staff will look at the potential for short-term engineering options to improve safety,” the statement said.
“Any consideration of short-term improvements will need to complement existing long-term design work that has already been completed, which includes four-laning this two-kilometre section of highway between Leigh Road and West Shore Parkway and adding median barriers.”
Young called it an “emergency priority because of the two deadly accidents and the 40 crashes that have occurred on that one stretch of space” in the past two years.
He said temporary barriers and traffic-calming measures need to be installed now and remain until permanent barriers are installed and the road widening is complete.
The Transportation Ministry said when considering major construction, it must consider the impact to traffic flow and delays from other projects, noting that the McKenzie interchange project and the Malahat safety improvement project are both within 15 kilometres of the site.
“Now that these important projects have been completed or are nearing completion, we anticipate moving forward with other safety priorities in the region, including the Leigh Road four-laning and median barrier project,” the ministry statement said.
Plans to install barriers and widen the highway were announced in 2016, but work has not started.
Last week, because of the fatal Jan. 8 crash on the Trans-Canada, the City of Langford asked for the province to expedite the work and it was agreed that it could “move ahead” in the summer, Young said.
That all changed Sunday with the second fatal crash.
“We owe it to the families now to fix this,” Young said. “There’s no time like now. Barriers save lives. It needs to be done immediately.”
