After two-and-a-half years of municipalities lobbying the province to make PR 201 conducive to truck traffic, the Reeve of the RM of Stuartburn is to the point of frustration.  

After a recent meeting with Manitoba government officials, Reeve Michelle Gawronsky says, “We were now informed that there's a possibility of 2026-27 when they'll send out the engineers (regarding PR 201) and I'm going, “Not good enough”.  

Gawronsky continues, “anytime I can thank this government for their wonderful announcements and start pushing them to actually honor their announcement, which from now till the elections on October 3rd, I'm going to push and get it out there as much as I can. I’m going to get them to RTAC the highway.” 

RTAC is Manitoba's heaviest regulated loading classification. The definition is a national standard for highway truck weight allowances. An RTAC classification means that a highway or road can support large trucks, construction machinery, anything under 9,100kg with a single axle maximum. 

Gawronsky was elected as Reeve of the RM of Stuartburn this past October and included upgrading the 201 as part of her election platform.  

She also attributes not having an RTAC highway running through RM to water issues and asks, “how we can start harnessing and controlling it? How can we build our economy and our municipality and assist the farmers that are here? How can we bring in new business?”  

“To be able to control and harness the water without it being RTAC, that's not going to happen. So, our municipality is just going to keep being a drain on everybody that's here, rather than us building it. The government wants us to be self-sufficient, they've proven that by freezing the funding to every municipality, and yet they do nothing to assist in making and helping us to improve. It’s so frustrating.” 

Gawronsky continues, “I've only been in this job three months and knowing how government works and knowing what monies are available and you know, they keep handing us back. I mean, with the school tax credit, “Oh goody, I got another $100”, meanwhile it's costing me $500 to be able to get my road cleaned this winter.”  

“You know, like keep that 100 bucks, fix the windrows. Let's make sure that municipalities have the funding that is needed and have the ability to increase the economy and the municipality. And let's just figure this out. We can be self-sufficient and we can do it very quickly. We just need to have the proper infrastructure in place to allow us to do it.”  

When referring to the Municipal funding freeze, Gawronsky speaks to the current government freezing operating funds to municipalities in 2016.  

She says, “we want to be able to improve the coffers within our municipality and the best way to do that is to be able to create jobs, create employment, which is another reason we are so happy that this government announced that they're going to be R-TACing the 201. Doing that will give us some economic relief and boosts within our municipality.” 

Gawronsky emphasizes what Reeves have previously mentioned is that PR 201 between Highway 75 and the 59, which is a major trade east-west corridor, cannot be used for transporting goods or services to or from communities like Vita, Stuartburn, and Piney. 

In October 2022, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, Doyle Piwniuk announced that the Manitoba government was investing over $60 million to upgrade Provincial Road (PR) 201 from PR 200 to PR 302.  

“Our initiative strategically identifies highways that should be upgraded to accommodate the heaviest commercial loads, and we are committed to continuing to invest in these important infrastructure projects.”  

$28 million of the $60 million will go toward upgrading PR 201 from Provincial Trunk Highway (PTH) 59 to PR 302. The upgrades were expected to start in 2025-2026. 

Currently, PR 201 is subjected to Level 1 spring road restrictions, which means that the maximum axle weight for vehicles is 90 percent of normal loading during the Spring.  

At the time, Piwniuk said that “while these restrictions are in effect, heavy vehicles may need to take alternate routes or haul multiple smaller loads which cause financial losses to businesses and to our province.”  

Dennis Smook, the MLA for La Verendrye, was also quoted as saying, that last spring the restriction was at 65 percent.  “Now they brought it back to 90 percent which has made a great difference for the local businesses to get material in to work with, or to ship out materials that they have made.”  

Moving up the start date of the PR 201 RTAC project is not what Gawronsky had hoped for.  

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