The provincial government is moving away from the P-3 model in plans to extend the divided highway on certain parts of the island.

Minister responsible Barry Petten, flanked by NAPE Secretary-Treasurer Trevor King, made the announcement this afternoon at Confederation Building.

Petten says the province is adopting a more traditional approach to the project which will see another 40 km of divided highway extended beyond Whitbourne and about 15 km between Bishop’s Falls and Grand Falls-Windsor.

The previous government indicated that the work would be done using a public-private partnership model, something that drew the ire of the province’s largest public sector union.

Transportation Minister Barry Petten says moving back to a more traditional approach will get the work started sooner.

“Three bidders that have been working on bids, but most of it is in-house, we’ve got a lot of that work ourselves, so we’ll use that to be able to get the tenders out earlier this year than what would normally be out,” he told reporters.

“Under the P-3 we probably wouldn’t have got nothing done until 2027, but now we’re going to get done this construction season.”