Nova Scotia budgeting $500M for highway projects, improvements in 2024-25

Nova Scotia’s public works minister says her department will spend more than $500 million over 12 months on roadwork, major highway projects and bridge replacements, a figure up slightly from the prior year’s spending.

Kim Masland says the money is budgeted for the province’s 2024-25 fiscal year, between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025.

The investment will fund projects already underway, with about $295 million going to design work, road and bridge improvements and equipment.

She says planning and preliminary design work has started on six major construction projects, including the Argyle Interchange and twinning projects on sections of highways 103, 104 and 107.

The province says it costs $500,000 on average to fix a kilometre of road, and between $5 million and $7 million per kilometre to twin a highway.

Nova Scotia budgeted about $450 million in the 2023-24 fiscal year as part of its five-year highway improvement plan.

The province has 23,000 kilometres of road and highways and 4,100 bridges.

Masland says major construction projects will continue on the following infrastructure:

— Highway 101 from Three Mile Plains to Falmouth

— Highway 102 Aerotech Connector

— Highway 103 from Tantallon to Hubbards

— Bridgewater Interchange

— Highway 107 Sackville-Bedford-Burnside connector

Some paving projects that were supposed to be completed in 2023-24, including on Highway 103 and Highway 107, will carry over to the upcoming fiscal year because workers were diverted last July to fix storm damage from flooding around Halifax and the South Shore.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 14, 2023.