The Saskatchewan government says the asphalt on most of the ramps on the new interchange at the intersection of the Trans-Canada Highway and Pinkie Road will have to be ripped up in order to prepare for a complex new series of ramps and overpasses.

The Pinkie Road Interchange was officially opened in the fall of 2013. The government said it was being built to "help accommodate truck traffic to and from the Global Transportation Hub."

The government says the overpass at Pinkie Road and the Trans-Canada Highway will remain but the asphalt on most of the ramps will have to be torn up to make way for a new series of ramps and overpasses. But now, less than 2½ years later, the government says it needs an overhaul to help connect the Trans-Canada Highway to the new South Regina Bypass.

"This will be a configuration of an interchange where pretty well ... in all directions, you can continue on wherever you want to go without having to come to a stop," explained Doug Wakabayashi, a spokesman with the Ministry of Highways. "There will be a series of ramps and loops where you can make those directional changes at highway speeds."

The existing overpass will remain, but will be joined by a second overpass. In addition, two new swooping elevated ramps will be built for traffic traveling east to north and north to west.

Wakabayashi said the new interchange is known as a systems interchange, as opposed to the existing service interchange.

The service interchange cost taxpayers $43 million. "It's fair to say that a full systems interchange costs significantly more than a service interchange," said Wakabayashi.

He said he doesn't know how much more because it's all included in the $1.88 billion price tag for the entire bypass project. "They bid the whole thing as a lump sum. So they don't itemize their bid."

Reeve wonders why bypass connection wasn't part of original plan

Jeff Poissant, reeve of the rural municipality of Sherwood, is not impressed at plans to rip up part of a road project completed only three years before. (CBC) Jeff Poissant, the reeve of the RM of Sherwood, which surrounds Regina, is not impressed.

"It boggles my mind that they never thought about connecting to the bypass in the first place in the future design of it," Poissant said.

"I think they didn't plan for the future or they knew about it and just didn't factor it in. It kinda worries me that there was so little forethought."

The government says it wasn't until August 2013 that it had decided to connect the South Bypass to the Trans-Canada Highway at Pinkie Road.

When it began constructing this interchange back in September 2011 the government was thinking that the South Bypass would reconnect with the Trans-Canada Highway east of Albert Street "on the curves between Wascana Parkway and Albert Street."

The $1.88 billion south Regina bypass project will connect to Pinkie Road through an interchange. (CBC) However, in September 2012, a consultant recommended that the bypass connect with the Pinkie Road interchange, which was already under construction.

"Not only would this provide a logical connection between highway bypass segments but it would pull bypass traffic entirely off city roadways and would eliminate the need to construct a complex and and unconventional interchange on Ring Road," says the MMM Group report entitled Highway No. 1 Southeast Regina Bypass Location Review Study.

The study acknowledged the Pinkie Road Interchange would have to be "upgraded" in order to accomplish this.

The government says the bypass was designed in a way that it can be retrofitted for this new use.