Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a Return to Oral Question asked by Mr. McLeod on February 21, 2001 regarding the Hay River Reserve access road.
The Member asked a question and a number of supplementary questions about the departments' traffic volume statistics, traffic accident statistics and maintenance expenditures for the Hay River Reserve access road.
The Member for Deh Cho pointed out that on July 7, 2000, in a statement to this House, I stated that over the past ten years, there have been a total of seven reportable motor vehicle accidents on the Hay River Reserve access road. The Member brought to my attention that in a report provided by research and information serviced in the last month, it indicated that there had been 15 reportable vehicle accidents on the Hay River Reserve access road over the same ten-year period.
Since last July, the department discovered that in some accident reports, the accident location was described as occurring on the Dene village road, which is actually another name for the Hay River Reserve access road. In the recent report the department generated, the accidents that had formerly been recorded as occurring on the Dene village road were included with accidents reported on the Hay River Reserve access road.
The Member further noted the department's traffic volume was published with the disclaimer that for 1999, the mechanical traffic counter on the Hay River Reserve access road malfunctioned and the data is unreliable. However, the department has historical traffic data collected from 1993 to the present that makes up for the poor data collected in 1999.
The Member referred to the 1998-99 annual maintenance cost per vehicle per kilometre for access roads in the Northwest Territories. The per vehicle kilometre statistics is a measure of the public benefit achieved by road maintenance expenditures. It is not a measure of the road maintenance effort performed. For this, the maintenance expenditure per kilometre is the appropriate comparative measure. The department's 1999-2000 maintenance expenditure of $7,558 per kilometre on the Hay River access road is the greatest maintenance expenditure of all 13 access roads in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I have another return to oral question asked by Mr. McLeod February 22, 2001 regarding the Mackenzie River ice crossing.