Moose fences are getting longer — is the highway getting safer?

They're big. You see them on the side of the highway in Newfoundland and Labrador, and there's more of them all the time. I'm talking about moose fences, and why the province is building them as fast as they can. Today, about 32 kilometers of highway are protected by moose fences, but right now, crews are working to extend that by more than a third, adding another 13 kilometers. Those fences are in two big sections, one on the east coast of Newfoundland and one on the west coast. There's a 19-kilometer section near Stephenville. Another 7.7 kilometers is under construction near Deer Lake. On the Avalon, 13 kilometers of fencing begins around the St. John's Rod and Gun Club. Now, another 5.5 kilometers is going up near the Foxtrap Access Road. Moose fencing does work. Problem is, it just takes a long time. It's expensive. How expensive? On average, the government is paying about $250,000 per kilometer of moose fence. Of course, it's a little more complicated than building a fence in your backyard. Well, you'll drive around, you'll see a fence coming up a hill and over, like, so-called cliff areas. Yeah, it's not, again, it's not your average terrain. I mean, that requires specialized equipment, and those people are good at what they do, but ultimately they'll provide safer roads for everyone. And now the really big question. How much safer do the Moose fences make our highways? How will we know if they're working? The East Coast fence hasn't been up long enough to collect good data, good data but the section on the west coast near Stephenville has been in place since 2011. This map shows moose vehicle collisions on the island between 2012 and 2025. Sadly there are a lot of them. But zoom in on the area of the west coast moose fence and you'll see a long stretch of highway with just a few collisions in all those years. That's the section with the fence. It's data-driven and all our decisions whether it's talking about safer roads, it's our snow clearing and adding on routes I've made clear to people too this will be based on data not politics. So if it works should it keep going? At the current pace of 13 kilometers per year it would take about 65 years just to fence the TCH but every day it gets a little longer and driving in this province gets a little safer. I do believe that we'll have to increase that pick up the pace of doing that but it takes 60 years a bit too long but based on budgetary pressures that as things improve we can definitely increase those budgets and get this done a lot faster. Zach Gowdy, CBC News, on the TransCanada Highway.