Highway minister responds to ‘phantom construction sites’

Frustrated Saskatchewan drivers are going to have to keep dealing with long construction speed zones.

Saskatchewan Highways and Infrastructure Minister Lori Carr received complaints about stretches of highway with construction speed limits, but no workers actually present at the sites.

She told 650 CKOM’s Gormley on Friday that there are a number of reasons why these so-called phantom construction sites might exist.

“Some of those jobs are actually jobs that we call ‘seal-coating jobs,’ so there’s absolutely nobody around, but the nature of the job, it takes about 24 hours for that to cure properly,” she said. “Also, there’s loose gravel on that, so the higher speeds you’re going, the more gravel that gets lifted.”

Carr said the government does its best to keep construction zones from stretching out too far.

“We do have steps in place to ensure the signage is as accurate as it can be for the job that’s taking place,” she told Gormley.

She mentioned daily inspections as one of these methods.

However, she said that drivers’ convenience is not the top priority.

“While I know that construction is a headache for drivers, and we don’t want to cause disruption to them, we truly feel that safety outweighs that short-term convenience,” she said.

Carr said there isn’t a maximum length for a construction zone.

“It can be longer than 15 (kilometres) …,” she said. “A lot of them are not much longer than that at all.”

The speed limit in construction zones is 60 km/h, unless otherwise posted.