THUNDER BAY – Plans to reconfigure the Thunder Bay Expressway into a divided highway are picking up speed.
A Ministry of Transportation spokesperson this week confirmed a planning and preliminary design study for the 13-kilometre stretch of the Expressway between Arthur Street and Balsam Street has been completed.
“An assessment of existing conditions was undertaken to determine future highway needs. The ministry has secured environmental approvals for a preferred plan that includes upgrading the (Expressway) to a four-lane divided highway with interchanges,” the emailed statement reads.
Next steps for that preferred plan will continue in early 2018 with more detailed design work, engineering, property acquisition and utility relocation.
Three public open house consultation sessions were held over the past four years since the preliminary design process was first announced.
Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Bill Mauro said he believes the changes to the highway are necessary.
“So much of our growth over the last 20 years has been west of the Expressway,” Mauro said on Friday.
“Those interchanges, those intersections, are very, very busy. I think we’ve all seen the growth in traffic and quite frankly I think there are things we can do to make it safer and better for the travelling public.”
Currently, the only twinned section of the Expressway is between Balsam Street and Hodder Avenue. The intersection at Hodder Avenue and Copenhagen Road features a cloverleaf interchange that was completed in 2012.
The stretch of highway that would potentially be divided travels through intersections at Arthur Street, Harbour Expressway, Oliver Road, John Street, Red River Road and Dawson Road and Balsam Street.
“For all six of those interchanges, what they may be is not yet in place,” Mauro said.
Construction of a divided Expressway with overhauled interchanges is likely still years away. According to the website established as part of the planning and preliminary design study, the project is not part of the province’s 2015-2019 Northern Highways Program.
There’s a lot of work to be done in the meantime, Mauro said.
“There are properties that potentially have to be purchased, there’s pre-engineering, there are public information sessions that need to be held. There are environmental approvals that need to be achieved,” Mauro said.
