I'm pretty sure this project has been shelved due to the current pecuniary difficulties of the province, but I can understand them completing the surveying for the highway. That would be a low cost item but a necessary one to allow for them to do further budgeting and planning.
The traffic volumes along the southern portion of route 11 are actually reasonably high, and certainly much greater than on most of the Moncton/Fredericton stretch of the TCH. The highway from Bouctouche to Shediac certainly could be divided, if for nothing else than purely for highway safety reasons. Highway 11 is flat, straight and has no passing lanes. It encourages reckless passing attempts. I certainly don't feel safe on this highway.
If dividing the highway from Shediac to Richibucto would cost $370M, it would seem reasonable that it would cost about $200M to divide it to Bouctouche. This is an achievable goal and this should be the first section twinned. Hopefully it could be done in the next 10 years.
I find this portion of the proposed alignment intriguing:
This includes the bypass around Shediac and the connection of route 11 to route 15. The red lines on the document indicate proposed realignments from the current roadway. You can see that the 11/15 interchange is completely reworked and would be
much safer than the current alignment. In particular, the westbound offramp from the 11 leading to the 15 will join with the exit from Main St in Shediac onto the 15. This would be a
huge improvement over the current short suicide exit onto the 11 from Main St!