New Brunswick Highway 1
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New Brunswick Highway 1 (also Route 1) is an important highway in the southern part of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. It runs for approximately 225 kilometres (140 miles) in an east-west direction from the Canada-United States border at St. Stephen to New Brunswick Highway 2 at River Glade.
The eastern ⅔ of Route 1 has been upgraded to a 4-lane controlled-access expressway (from Lepreau to River Glade). The remaining portion of the highway running through Charlotte County is mostly 2-lane (non-divided) with a mixture of controlled and non-controlled access, however this section is scheduled to be upgraded by 2010.
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Communities served
The highway begins at St. Stephen at the Canada-U.S. border and encounters the following communities as it proceeds east:
- Oak Bay
- Digdeguash
- St. George
- Pennfield
- New River Beach
- Pocologan
- Lepreau
- Musquash
- Prince of Wales
- Saint John
- Rothesay
- Quispamsis
- Hampton
- Norton
- Sussex
- Penobsquis
- Anagance
- Petitcodiac
The highway ends east of Petitcodiac at River Glade where it interchanges with New Brunswick Highway 2, the Trans-Canada Highway.
History
The majority of road development in New Brunswick follows settlement patterns which pre-dated motor transport, thus most communities developed along navigable waterways or were served by railways. The development of controlled access expressways only began in the 1960s and only around the largest communities. The majority of early provincial highway improvements merely consisted of upgrading local roads.
Early route
Route 1 initially followed local roads from St. Stephen eastward to Oak Bay where it swung south to the town of St. Andrews, then back north and east (still along local roads) until reaching Saint John where it followed Manawagonish Road through the former city of Lancaster. It crossed the Saint John River at the Reversing Falls bridge before proceeding on Douglas Avenue into the north end of the city. From there it went over to Rothesay Avenue and followed the shores of the Kennebecasis River up the valley to Sussex where it ended.
Saint John Throughway
The earliest significant upgrade to this routing came in the late 1960s during an urban-renewal project in Saint John which saw the construction of a new highway (the Saint John Throughway) to bypass increased truck traffic around the city. Several alignment options were examined with the majority of citizens wanting the highway to go north of the city through the suburb of Millidgeville from where an easier crossing of the Reversing Falls gorge could be attempted.
However, the city, along with the provincial and federal governments, decided to bargain with the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) to purchase the majority of the Mill Street Yard near the neo-gothic Union Station for a highway alignment which would run through the middle of the city (somewhat like the infamous Interstate 93 alignment which was built through Boston).
The removal of the rail yard and historic station coincided with the federally-controlled National Harbours Board building the 4-lane Saint John Harbour Bridge downstream of the bridge at Reversing Falls which opened in 1968. Part of this deal involved the NHB collecting a 25¢ toll in each direction, however the toll cannot be raised without federal, provincial and municipal agreement, therefore it remains at the 1968 price. The new bridge also had the added effect of cutting the upper part of Saint John Harbour off from large ship traffic.
In a related project, in 1969, the federal and provincial governments worked with CPR to revamp the Saint John-Digby ferry service by building a new terminal in the city's west end, along with interchanges off the new expressway.
McKay Highway
The Saint John Throughway only extended from Spruce Lake at Lorneville in the west, to where it met Rothesay Avenue in the east at Coldbrook but its construction coincided with the decline of rail traffic and rise of truck traffic and personal automobile travel. The Saint John area soon saw the growth of suburbs in the towns of Rothesay and Quispamsis in the Kennebecasis River valley, which were located just outside the Bay of Fundy's "fog belt."
In the 1970s, an extension to the throughway was built east from Rothesay Avenue to just past the town of Quispamsis where Route 1 reverted to local roads up the valley to Hampton and beyond. This controlled-access 2-lane section bypassing these towns was named the McKay Highway.
Extending Controlled Access
In a new focus on improving arterial highways in the province, the provincial government during the 1960s-1980s undertook other improvements to Route 1, namely in building new sections (or designating existing sections) as controlled access. This resulted in the establishment of maximum speed limits of 100 km/h (65 mph) on these sections.
A 2-lane bypass of Hampton was built up the Kennebecasis Valley from where the McKay Highway ended, rejoining local roads at Norton. Another bypass was built from Oak Bay to Digdeguash to avoid the circuitous routing down the St. Andrews peninsula and through the town of the same name. Further 2-lane bypasses were built around St. George and on the outskirts of Sussex where an interchange with the Trans-Canada Highway was built.
4-lane Construction
The provincial government changed in 1987 with the election of Premier Frank McKenna who was focused on improving the province's business climate. One of the government's major tasks was to revamp provincial transportation infrastructure and McKenna entered into aggressive negotiations with the federal government of prime minister Brian Mulroney to secure federal funding of new highway projects. McKenna viewed the Trans-Canada and Route 1 in New Brunswick as being partially a federal responsibility since they funnelled the majority of Atlantic Canada's highway traffic to the U.S. and central Canada. The signing of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1989, coupled with federal approval for numerous railway line abandonments in the Maritimes during the 1980s, led to predictions of further highway traffic growth on New Brunswick highways in the 1990s.
Under the remainder of the McKenna administration's years of power (until 1997), Route 1 saw 4-lane expansion and upgrading between Lorneville to Lepreau in the west and between Coldbrook and Apohaqui (near Sussex) in the east. A small 4-lane re-alignment was also built between St. George and Pennfield. The Trans-Canada Highway (Route 2) was also upgraded to 4-lanes between Penobsquis and Peticodiac.
Trans-Canada Re-alignment
The final years of the McKenna administration saw an agreement signed with a private consortium called Maritime Road Development Corporation (led by former provincial Liberal leader and former federal Minister of Transport Douglas Young) to privately finance and build a toll highway to carry the Trans-Canada Highway (New Brunswick Highway 2) in a new alignment from a point west of Fredericton to a point on the existing TCH west of Moncton at River Glade.
The toll issue was not without controversy as it led to the downfall of McKenna's successor, Camille Theriault in 1999 to PC leader Bernard Lord. The highway was built, but tolls were removed from most portions of the highway before they opened and this portion of the privately-built (and owned) re-alignment of the Trans-Canada Highway has a hidden toll which is charged to the provincial government, thus motorists do not directly pay for their highway usage.
The new alignment of the Trans-Canada Highway opened in October, 2001 and at this time the portion of the old TCH which ran between River Glade and Sussex was re-designated as part of Route 1, extending the eastern terminus of this highway approximately 40 km (25 miles). Plans called for completion of a 4-lane bypass to replace the old TCH alignment around Sussex and construction took place from 2000–2004. A portion of the old TCH alignment from Sussex toward Fredericton has been re-designated as New Brunswick Highway 10 and a re-aligned interchange has been built at Sussex.
Future Plans
- In summer 2003 the federal and provincial governments signed a major highway funding agreement to complete 4-lane upgrades to the TCH (Route 2) in the upper Saint John River valley as well as to Route 1 from Lepreau west to the Canada-U.S. border. Part of this agreement includes funding (in conjunction with Maine and the U.S. federal government) for construction of a third bridge over the St. Croix River to carry heavy traffic in a bypass north of Calais and St. Stephen.
- In the late 1990s the "St. Stephen Truck Route" was built from a point on Route 1 east of St. Stephen to the border crossing at Milltown just north of the town. A 4-lane upgrade and/or re-alignment of Route 1 (including part of the St. Stephen Truck Route) is now being built in stages from this future border crossing just north of the Milltown bridge, east to Oak Bay, then to Digdeguash, and St. George, and from Pennfield to Lepreau.
- Within the next several years, it is expected that there will be a new interchange built along the Saint John Throughway. This so-called "One Mile House" interchange will be one of the most expensive in the province and is intended to route truck traffic away from the Uptown and straight to the industrial parks on the East Side. It will be a short distance east of the Crown Street exit, cross over the railway tracks and connect to Rothesay Avenue and Russel Street.