Residents who frequent the stretch of road north of Moose Jaw will be pleased to hear there will soon be upgrades. 

Recently, the Provincial Government announced that they will be adding another lane for drivers to pass eachother on Highway 2. 

"We actually plan on putting one set of passing lanes in there, and it'll be built about 7km outside of the city of Moose Jaw; that should help flow traffic more easily between Moose Jaw and Buffalo Provincial Park," explained Highways and Infrastructure Minister, Loir Carr. "There's an increase in traffic there and especially in the summer months it's even higher because of the Provincial Park, so we just thought that this might be a little safer for everyone to get back and forth."

 She noted that the choice to create passing lanes was a cost-effective and smooth process, as there was much less red tape than they would normally have to cut through. 

"Passing lanes can be done at a much lesser cost than twinning the highway and it happens much quicker. With Twinning you have to worry about questions of land and of course all the extra work that goes into twinning highways. With passing lanes, a lot of the time we can just move ahead, and we were fortunate enough that we already had this land that we're going to be using so we just decided to do it and away we go."

According to the province, about 3,700 vehicles use highway 2 just north of the Friendly City on a daily basis, which is an increase in the area from years past. 

"There could be a number of reasons, maybe people are commuting a little bit more often, I'm not really sure," added Minister Carr. "We just know that since 2008 the numbers have increased by 600 vehicles a day, and we also know that road is very narrow so it's just nice to have this extra room to move around."

She also said that when passing lanes are added to a highway it can bring down the number of collisions in the area by 25% and that it's always about making sure our families get home safe.