The Alberta government will roll out a test period for 120 km/h on the Queen Elizabeth Highway 2, south of Leduc, Alta. The province says it will work with law enforcement to monitor driver behaviour and collect safety assessments. President of the Alberta Motor Transport Association Robert Harper joins Alberta Primetime’s Michael Higgins to discuss how the association will cautiously approach this testing period. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Michael Higgins: How is your association approaching the arrival of this test phase for 120? What’s landing with you about this as a policy change? Robert Harper: We are cautious. When we asked our members, about a third of them are in support, a third of them are opposed, and a third of them are waiting to see. Most of the issues with being opposed is that we have a number of larger safety carriers that have governors in their vehicles that prohibit them from driving over 105 kilometers an hour. Those companies have no intention of adjusting their speed to higher kilometers. There’s three reasons: One would be for safety, second would be for fuel consumption, which increases as speeds increase, and the third would be the wear and tear on the vehicle increases so your maintenance costs go up. There’s also a physics issue. The public should be well aware of the impacts of increasing speeds. As speed increases, the amount of energy increases by an exponential factor. Physics show that a speed increase of 110 to 120 is a 19 per cent increase in energy, a nine per cent increase in speed. If you went for 110 to 130, that would be a 40 per cent increase in energy. People have to understand that when this happens, because you’re traveling further, when you have had an accident, your distance to stop increases, and so does the impact. Because of the more energy, you’re going to have a more severe crash. MH: How much consultation was done with your industry prior to this being introduced as a policy change? Did your association have a voice? RH: No, they’ve consulted us in terms of telling us what they’re doing to improve the infrastructure. As you probably have seen if you’ve travelled between Calgary and Edmonton and you’re going past Leduc, since the fall, you’ll notice there was construction on the interchanges. On that 22 kilometre stretch, where they revamped the interchanges to make them safer for and corresponding to the increase of on ramp and acceleration and deceleration off ramp speeds. They’ve been looking at where they need to put in, as they think about doing this on a longer stretch, eliminating at-road crossings on the QEII. There would not be any grade intersections anymore and there would be a need to replace some of the roadside turn offs. So the speed at 120, for trucks to pull off those turn offs that they have currently other than one by Lacombe, they’re not suitable for long combination vehicles. MH: What do you feel the province should be watching for where data collection during this test is concerned, for the test to be considered effective? RH: I think the collisions have to be checked, whether people are increasing speeds beyond 120. We’re seeing them increasing the speed beyond 120, because the reason we’re doing it is because people already drive 120. Are they agreeing then to higher speeds again, because the limits posted. The other thing they should be looking at is education. It doesn’t matter what the speed limit is, you have to drive to the road conditions. You have to make sure, as commercial vehicles do, that your vehicle is set to be able to accommodate those higher speeds, especially tires. Knowing that in higher speeds, your tire condition makes a difference, especially in the weather. If your tires are not good, you’re going to require longer distances to stop. MH: How much do you think this is actually going to impact the flow of traffic, especially from the standpoint of someone behind the wheel of an 18 wheeler? RH: We’ll have some companies that will drive well below the speed limit or 105, we’ll have some that drive at the speed limit, and we’ll have some that drive, as they do today, above the speed limit. Differential speed limits do cause frustration for drivers, especially when they’re entering and exiting the highway. I can see that frustration increasing. But there was a period of time, I think in the 90s or late 80s perhaps, when we had differential speed limits for commercial vehicles based on speed and time of day, and that was eliminated because of the problems it caused with frustration with drivers with that differential speed.
