Northwestern Ontario municipal leaders are backing a call from their northeastern counterparts for a "nation-building commitment" to the Trans-Canada Highway in northern Ontario.
The Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA) is joining the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM) in urging the Ontarian and Canadian governments to modernize both Highways 11 and 17 across Northern Ontario, and - to help with that - designate it a "nation-building project" under the Building Canada Act.
Both organizations note the Trans-Canada Highway's a four-lane corridor in most other provinces, but is mostly two-lane in Ontario, making it the "weak link in Canada's national highway system", with FONOM proposing a combination of strategic four-lane widening, selective twinning, and 2+1 highways - featuring alternating passing lanes with a crash-rated median barrier - to improve the highway, warning "each accident not only causes human tragedy but also disrupts more than 8400 trucks moving $200-million in goods daily", with expectations truck traffic will double in the next decade.