The highway between Saint John and the Canada-United States border at St. Stephen, N.B., will be completely twinned by 2014.

The New Brunswick and federal governments announced on Thursday that they will spend $275 million to twin the remaining 27 kilometres on Route 1 to create a four-lane highway. About 30 kilometres of four-lane highway already exist along the route.

The federal government has agreed to pay up to $137.5 million for the project.

The upgrade will make it easier to move goods to the United States, said local Conservative MP Greg Thompson.

"It makes a real difference to companies," Thompson said, "where they locate and where they decide to build factories and move their goods into the U.S. market. So this is really good news for all of us."

The twinning is also expected to make the route safer and reduce the number of fatal crashes in the area, Thompson said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to ask Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean to dissolve Parliament soon, setting the stage for an Oct. 14 election.

But Thompson said the highway announcement had nothing to do with the potentially pending election.

"Timing is always important in any of these projects. But the work on this has been ongoing over a period of years. This is one clearly we wanted to get done," Thompson said.

It's a project that residents in Charlotte County have been waiting for a long time, Thompson said.

The project is an important infrastructure priority for the province, said Premier Shawn Graham. "Eliminating this bottleneck will be a positive development for the economies of all four Atlantic provinces."