Canamex Dream Still Alive

After spending a few years on the back burner, the concept of the Canamex highway corridor from Canada to Mexico is once again being considered as a possible reality, according to the Edmonton Sun

by Staff

June 22, 2000

2 min to read

After spending a few years on the back burner, the concept of the Canamex highway corridor from Canada to Mexico is once again being considered as a possible reality, according to the Edmonton Sun.

The "Canamex Corridor" would be a continuous four-lane highway stretching from Edmonton and Calgary and then on to Interstate 15 through Montana, Idaho and down to Las Vegas. After Vegas, the route would pick up U.S. 93 to Phoenix and then Interstate 10 to Tucson, where it would join Interstate 19 to the Mexican border and then run into Mexico. Since
NAFTA opened the trade borders across North America, truckers continent-wide have been expressing interest in the creation of such a route, reports the Sun.
According to Alberta Trucking Assn. President Jurgen Mantei, the renewed interest in Canamex came as a result of some U.S. states being given extra money for road improvements by the
federal government. With those improvements, the Interstates will be able to take heavier traffic, he said. The Alberta Trucking Association and the provincial government assumed Canamex was just a dream, considering
each state has different road allowance rules that would make it impossible for a driver to get on one road that would have one uniform set of weights from Canada to Mexico.
But in the last few months, there has been a revived effort to put the idea of Canamex back in motion. According to the Sun, representatives from the Alberta Trucking Association appealed to Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne last month, informing him that if Canamex is to succeed, his state will need to raise the weight maximum to 129,000 lbs. to
ensure that all sections of the road have a
uniform weight allowance.
According to the Sun, Arizona and Nevada are also working with the U.S. federal government on a $184 million bridge that would allow trucks to bypass the Hoover Dam, which cannot support long combination vehicles (LCVs). The completion of that bridge is also critical to the future of Canamex.
Representatives of the Canamex Corridor Coalition will meet in Salt Lake City next
month, and will meet again in Great Falls,
Mont., in October.