Province closing roadside rest stops ahead of long weekend

A group of roadside rest stops across the province are being closed ahead of the Canada Day long weekend.

Doug Wakabayashi, executive director of communications with the Ministry of Highways, said operations to maintain and monitor roadside stops for nine different sites along highways 1, 16 and 7 are being suspended.

Wakabayashi joined Gormley on Thursday to discuss the changes.

“The reason for that is largely the condition of the rest stops themselves,” he said. “They’re not really built to a modern standard. For example, the washroom facilities, there’s no running water. In addition, a number of them are not built to a standard that semi trucks, or larger trucks can use.”

Wakabayashi said these locations were closed due to the difficulty in maintaining them as they attracted repeated vandalism and misuse.

“Some of the things our crews are finding out there when they clean them up are things like household waste, sometime human waste and needles,” he added.

Discussions are ongoing with the Saskatchewan Trucking Association to find ways to meet truck drivers’ needs moving forward.

“The need for places where they can park and stop is an issue they keep bringing to our attention,” Wakabayshi said.

Truck drivers across the prairies aren’t convinced closing the aging roadside stops is the way to go.

Eric Roeder, who works with driver development at Bison Transport in Winnipeg, said drivers depend on these rest stops for issues like fatigue and a lack of bathrooms along a driver’s route.

“(Drivers) certainly need places, if they’re feeling fatigued or ill or something, to pull off the road,” he said. “Regulations are something that should be followed. If there’s regulations in place to stop and do inspections … there certainly needs to be places to do that.”

Wakabayashi said the private sector is filling the need of the road stops with more and more restaurants and gas stations being built along highways.

Saskatoon-based truck driver Trent Lalonde said his experiences say otherwise, as there is rarely space to park on commercial properties.

“Restaurants and these businesses are in it to make money, they’re not in it to provide a free washroom service for people driving by,” Lalonde said.