Roads in Arcadia

Steve LeBlanc · May 5, 2026

Roads can tend to be a “hot button” issue. I did some research and wanted to share what I’ve learned with you, the taxpayer.

Like most communities, our roads; both within the municipality and provincial roads entering and exiting our communities, leave a lot to be desired. Road “fixes” are not inexpensive and the question arises as to who is actually responsible for these costs.

It’s not just the “municipally” owned roads that Arcadia has to budget for.

We have multiple classes of roads:

  1. Municipally owned roads:
  • Cambridge-Narrows has 4 kilometers of municipally owned roads
  • Gagetown has 44 kilometers of municipally owned roads. As I understand it, each of these two wards (formally incorporated villages) are responsible for costs associated with their owned roads. I believe monies for repairs comes from each former village’s protected surplus (brought in at amalgamation)
  1. Class A/ B provincial highways within the four local services districts (Hampstead, Upper Gagetown, Waterborough and Jemseg, and a bit of Wickham, all now part of Arcadia:
    Provincial highways located within the post local governance reform boundaries, that were previously not within a local government will continue to be owned, maintained and funded by the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.
  2. Class A/B provincial roads within the boundaries of Cambridge-Narrows and Gagetown: The Provincial-Municipal Highway Partnership (PMHP) Program was created to provide financial assistance to local governments for capital upgrades to provincial-municipal highways (excludes bypass highways). Over 1,400 km of provincial-municipal highways are eligible for funding under the program.

Through its Provincial-Municipal Highway Partnership (PMHP) Program, the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, will partner with local governments in New Brunswick to share eligible costs of maintaining provincial-municipal highways located within local governments boundaries.

  • Cambridge-Narrows: 1 km of Class A highways/ 62 kms of Class B highways
  • Gagetown: 14km of Class A highways/ 5.9km of Class B highways

More about this program (what is eligible/ not eligible) can be found at this link: https://www.gnb.ca/en/topic/driving-transportation/roads/pmhp-program.html

This program was discussed per council meeting minutes of June 17, 2024:
Under the PHMP, the Province partners with municipalities to share eligible and approved costs of maintaining and upgrading these roads. Those roads exist only in the former villages of Cambridge-Narrows and Gagetown- roads in former unincorporated areas are still owned, maintained and funded by DTI.

We have an annual exchange with DTI on the municipality’s priorities in the fall; in the spring, we receive a letter stating what priorities they believe must be tackled.

The municipal requests and the provincial priorities often don’t match.

In 2024, approval was received for 3 projects:

  1. Cherry Hill Road, Route 715 to the village limit-chip seal a distance of approximately 2.9km with a cost $110,000.
  2. Upper Hampstead Road, drainage, culvert replacements, asphalt leveling and chip seal, a distance of approximately 3.6km with a maximum contribution of $655,000 for its 95% share.
  3. Doctor’s Hill Road, Tilley Road to Route 102, drainage and asphalt paving, a distance of approximately 0.6km, with a maximum contribution of $394,000 for its 95% share. I believe Gagetown’s share was in the area of $30,000. The takeaway here is that essentially DTI can proceed with work on a provincial highway and if within Arcadia proper, the municipality must share in those costs. The percentage is not stated: I’ve seen 10, 20 and 30% (the website does not specify the %)

Looking at the above, .6 km of milling/ repaving in Gagetown cost just under $400,000. Imagine 20 kms, with a co-pay of 10 or 15%, or more?

Regardless of where these roads are located, they are ultimately provincial roads. A municipality should not be paying to repair these. That’s what our provincial taxes are for.

This is compounded by the fact that the municipality does not have the ability to choose the roads that they feel need work the most.

I think this should be a subject of discussion with DTI as to more input and decision making from the municipality and in regard to funding.

A second issue I noted with regard to roads relates to DTI costs in our budget as it relates to summer/ winter maintenance done by them.

Looking at the 2026 budget:

  • Road Transport/ Roads & Streets / Summer Maintenance: DTI: Specify lane Km’s (in comments)
  • Snow & Ice Removal: DTI: Specify lane KMs (in comments)

These two items total $374,000. I noted nothing was indicated in the comments as to “lane kms”. I did inquire with former CAO Gilman.

I was advised that these costs relate to grading, road repairs/ snow clearing for roads that the Province owns that are within the borders of Gagetown and C-N. and that the total lane kilometers is 181.358 lane kilometers. I do not know how this number is derived. So, not only do we pay to upgrade these roads, we also pay to maintain/ plow them…….no cost sharing.

If I am fortunate to secure your vote as Mayor; I, along with council will have these discussions with DTI and keep residents informed as to what outcome comes from these meetings and also, to confirm what projects for 2026/2027 have been approved and the cost to Arcadia of said projects.

Details Matter!