Temiskaming chamber lobbies for Highway 11 passing lanes.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Temiskaming & Region

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Carving out more passing lanes may be the answer to improve motorist safety on Highway 11, says the Temiskaming Shores and Area Chamber of Commerce.

A recent meeting with the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) confirmed what the chamber's highway committee chair Helene Culhane already suspected, there's just not the traffic volume to warrant four-laning the vital north-south link.

"We pretty much heard what we expected to hear," she said, "that there's is no way of four-laning all the way through, so we're going to be concentrating more on more passing lanes and finding some way to get our traffic flowing safer."

Concerns about the safety of the highway emerged in 2014 when former Nipissing-Timiskaming MP Jay Aspin opined that he wanted the federal and provincial government to begin a dialogue to upgrade the 160-kilometre stretch of road between North Bay and Temiskaming Shores to improve safety and relieve congestion.

Aspin voiced his concerns after a longtime friend, Andre Lamothe, owner of Temagami Marine, was killed in a car accident on the highway near New Liskeard in 2014.

Fatal accidents have often closed the road to traffic, delaying goods and supplies from reaching businesses in the Temiskaming area in a timely fashion.

He suggested the local chamber take the lead and lobby for a 400-series highway, noting the work of the North Bay chamber was instrumental in four-laning the southern half of Highway 11 between North Bay and Huntsville.

The two-lane highway sees frequent cottage traffic in the Temagami area during summer and considerable commercial truck volume in winter for cross-Canada truckers wanting to avoid the storms and closures on Highway 17 on the eastern shore of Lake Superior.

"It is a concern among residents that the highway has become more...