Highway idea excites ferry operator

Mike Adams, commercial marketing manager with Bay Ferries, says Cianbro Corp. proposes a 350-kilometre toll highway to connect Calais to the Quebec border at Sherbrooke.

He told last week’s meeting of the Digby Area Board of Trade that the new highway could save truckers three and a half to five hours of driving time, meaning lower fuel costs and less wear and tear on vehicles.

It would also mean more traffic through southern New Brunswick, and Adams says that could be good news for the Bay of Fundy ferry service between Saint John and Digby. “What a great opportunity for us to capture traffic that we’re now losing,” said Adams.

Much of the truck traffic between the Maritimes and central Canada now goes through the northern New Brunswick corridor, an area that stands to lose out if commercial traffic diverts. “That is the downside,” Adams agreed.

But he said an international transportation summit last week in Halifax, “a who’s who of people in the trucking industry,” showed excitement at benefits promised by the highway—as long as toll costs were not too steep.

Cianbro Corp., a Maine-based construction company, has proposed the highway not just for Canadian carriers, but because much of Maine’s target market in the central U.S. would be more easily reached through central Canada.

Adams met earlier this year in Moncton with Cianbro CEO and chairman Peter Vigue, who said then the company plans to start highway construction in 2011 and complete the project by 2014. It would be financed completely by private investment, not government.